I had been meaning to read this journalistic classic by Janet Malcolm for years, after having read an excerpt of it in grad school, but, you know, life happens. I finally picked it up and devoured it on a plane a few days ago on my way home to visit my parents.
Essentially, Janet Malcolm revisits the case against Joe McGinniss, a journalist who was sued after publishing a book about convicted murderer Jeffrey MacDonald. MacDonald felt that McGinniss had deliberately lured him into thinking that they were friends, that he believed in his innocence, and then written a scathing indictment. McGinniss denied intentional subterfuge and, also, argued that it is the writer's practice to coax the subject into comfort, however false. It explores the complexity of the writer-subject relationship, truth and justice, and the thorny psychology involved in making the personal public.
This book is a journalistic classic for a reason; it pushes writers to come to terms with the insanity of trying to write about real people's lives with integrity. What you learn in journalism school these days is fairly limited to networking and logistics--new media techniques, the craft and art of writing, journalistic protocol, but rarely are the psychological incongruities of the profession brought to light and discussed openly.
I have struggled with the drive to write the emotional truth of a person's story so as to illustrate my analysis in the most cogent, inspiring way and my deep commitment to honoring that person's humanity and privacy. The two are often at odds in a way that I suspect non-writers wouldn't predict. It's painful and murky and fraught with human frailty.
Through a feminist lens, this is very related to the personal being the political. On the one hand, for example, women's struggles with perfection and their own bodies is entirely personal--right up there with sex and money and religion in terms of unspeakables. On the other hand, I had a conviction that there was a collective story to our individual pain, and I wanted to bring that to light in my book, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters. So I asked these women--many of them my friends, all of them people I care about--to share their stories with the world. I encouraged/pushed/coaxed (depending on your perspective) them to bare their souls (personal) for the betterment of the public (political). Many experienced unanticipated consequences (angry mothers, a sense of being horribly exposed). Some also experienced a deep sense of freedom, courage, a letting go. I stood, morally, in between these two experiences, feeling a bit helpless and also totally responsible.
I leave you with Malcolm's own words (pronouns admittedly annoying):
Unlike other relationships that have a purpose beyond themselves and are clearly delineated as such (dentist-patient, lawyer-client, teacher-student), the writer-subject relationship seems to depend for its life on a kind of fuzziness and murkiness, if not utter covertness, of purpose. If everybody put his cards on the table, the game would be over. The journalist must do his work in a kind of deliberately induced state of moral anarchy.
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sighhhhhh
anarchy gets thrown around like some band-aid word that can be used to describe almost anything but its actual practices and meanings. what he's talking about borrows the abstract, non-defined anarchy that everyone else threatens everyone else with. Dont like capitalism? what do you want, anarchy? dont like democracy? well without it, it would be anarchy!
to me, if anarchism/anarchy is anything, its about taking seriously non-hierarchical relations, between people, families (yes they still exist in anarchy!), communities (they still exist too!)...
but im clearly just p-o'd about the misuses and threatening uses of anarchy. the author sublimates his own moral uncertainty into something familiar called 'anarchy' but, there exists a praxis of morals in anarchy, so i kind of feel like its a big write off/dismissal of the actual meaning in favour for the ambiguous, threatening, pop-culture uses of anarchy.
This book followed Malcolm's In the Freud Archives. At the time of publication New York magazine published an article pointing out the parallels between the McGinniss/MacDonald relationship and the Malcolm/Masson relationship behind In the Freud Archives. While Masson's lawsuit against Malcolm and the New Yorker copped all the publicity, the story of what Malcolm did to Masson as background for what she "reports" McGinniss doing to his murderer gives the reader a deeper understanding of what she's referring to in this text.
My take on all non-fiction storytelling - if it's not captured on film or tape it didn't happen the way we think/say/report it did. So, when we express anything other than a cold certifiable fact (e.g, today's date is...) we are in the realm of what we might mean, not what we mean to say or even fully understand what we are saying. And given the weight of the written word vs. the spoken, we should be very careful when we attribute certain words to someone...even if they said them. Evolution gave us these wonderful brains, but not to be perfect recording machines or perfect translators between thought and word.
And in the big scheme of things, if it wasn't for the fictions we tell ourselves all day long none of us would be able to function in this hyper-distinction-making world. And since that takes alot of energy, go be nice to people, they're exhausted!
This is a tough issue. As an anthropology student, I interview people, in their homes, about deeply personal issues. Then I turn off my recorder, pick up my bag, and say good-bye.
I try to express my gratitude for their time and candor and my understanding that I've asked them to talk about difficult and emotional issues, but I still feel a little bad.
After all, I'm taking their information and turning it into a thesis that furthers my career. I hope that it will be useful for people who want to further the cause, but my primary goal is for myself.
Interesting dilemma. Reminds of a story out of Chicago, about a journalist fired after attending a pool party at the house of a murder suspect on whom she was reporting. Her defense, and many other journalists said the same, was that it was common to cultivate sources by meeting with them in social functions. Or having purely social calls with them.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/07/10/national/main3042287.shtml