{"id":74606,"date":"2014-07-28T12:38:28","date_gmt":"2014-07-28T16:38:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=74606"},"modified":"2014-08-07T11:12:23","modified_gmt":"2014-08-07T15:12:23","slug":"youve-been-fictionalized","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/07\/28\/youve-been-fictionalized\/","title":{"rendered":"You\u2019ve Been Fictionalized!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Or, Is this <\/em>really what you think of me?<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The shock of recognition.<\/p><\/div>\n

Twenty-odd years ago, T.\u2009C. Boyle asked me about the artists\u2019 colonies I\u2019d been to\u2014he was writing a novel. I described the lunches dropped off on the residents\u2019 porches, the nightly readings and revels. When his book, East Is East<\/em>, came out, I read a few chapters, then stopped, gut-socked and mortified. Yes, there, sprinkled in, was the material I\u2019d given him, along with an added surprise\u2014Wasn\u2019t that me in those pages, and cast in a none-too-flattering light?<\/p>\n

In real life, T.\u2009C. called me La Huneven, and here he called his heroine, Ruth Dershowitz, La Dershowitz. Ruth was a talentless writer who aspired to literary fiction while writing restaurant reviews and articles for Cosmo<\/em>. Hey! I wrote restaurant reviews! And I\u2019d once written an article for Cosmo<\/em>! Was this, then, what Tom really thought of me? That I was a talentless airhead poseur trying to break into the hallowed world of literature?<\/p>\n

This was my first experience of being fictionalized. I still recall the yellow-white flash of queasiness, the mortification: a sense of powerlessness and an utter lack of recourse. <\/p>\n

\u00a0* * *<\/p>\n

So when my husband recently announced that he was uncomfortable about my putting him in a short story, I sympathized. Then I tried to explain.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t put you<\/em> in a short story!\u201d I cried.<\/p>\n

I swore to Jim that my young man owed far more to Owen Gereth in The Spoils of Poynton<\/em> than to him. In fact, I\u2019d used only a tiny nub of our shared life\u2014a small family ring he\u2019d been given for his bar mitzvah\u2014but the use of it, Jim felt, implicated him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not telling you not to write or publish the story,\u201d Jim said. \u201cI\u2019m just telling you how I feel.\u201d<\/p>\n

I know that feeling. I wished there was something I could say so he wouldn\u2019t take it so personally. But, wouldn\u2019t you know, my next idea for a story came from something that happened on our honeymoon.<\/p>\n

That wasn\u2019t personal, either.<\/p>\n

\u00a0* * *<\/p>\n

What can you do when you\u2019ve been fictionalized?<\/p>\n

Go fetal. Give the writer a good talking to. Write a letter of complaint. Write your own book, your way. Keep it to yourself and seethe. You can sue, but the bar for libel lawsuits involving fiction is very, very high. And so is the cost.<\/p>\n

According to the libel lawyer Elizabeth McNamara, the fictionalized, like all litigants, sue for one of two reasons: because they feel wronged, or for money.<\/p>\n

Your ex-girlfriend has put you in a story; you\u2019re unmistakable\u2014that\u2019s your hair color, your tattoo, your speech impediment\u2014only she\u2019s made you a rapist.<\/p>\n

Or your cheating, lying ex-boyfriend has written a best seller featuring you, your family, and all your best lines; he\u2019s sold the screen rights, he\u2019s raking it in. Why shouldn\u2019t you have a share of the pot?<\/p>\n

\u201cSince time immemorial writers have used real life to inspire them and build upon their experience,\u201d says McNamara. \u201cBut invariably, characters diverge from reality.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s the rub. And there goes your case, out the window.<\/p>\n

\u00a0* * *<\/p>\n

Writers can take offense when someone asks what\u2019s real or autobiographical in our work, because to us, that\u2019s not what counts. The bits taken from life are tiny scales on the dragon\u2019s tail\u2014what about that whole beautiful writhing, fire-breathing dragon?<\/p>\n

But one scale can assume enormous importance to the friend or family member who beholds him or herself in its shiny surface. Often\u2014but not always\u2014that\u2019s a sick-making moment.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t as if a writer merely records life as it unfurls. Reality does not automatically transcribe as literature; real people are not shapely, compelling characters to be harvested. Charming facts and sharp observations rarely slide seamlessly into whatever narrative is at hand. To fictionalize material\u2014any material, real or imaginary\u2014is to subject it to the demands, the conventions, and rigors of the project at hand. A fictional narrative is constructed, shaped, and sized, its raw material muted, amplified, trimmed, and minced, recombined and recolored.<\/p>\n

The writer Susan Taylor Chehak said that she was fictionalized once, \u201cBut by the time she got me to fit, I wasn\u2019t me anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not all are as cool-headed as Chehak. Some of the fictionalized share a wide streak of solipsism\u2014for them, a few recognized facts can trigger a strong response. I have one friend who, years before I knew her, lived in Round Rock, Texas. She told me how, drunk in her youth, she\u2019d once called some policemen \u201cpin dicks\u201d as they were driving her down to the station. I stole that line and gave it to a young man as he was being hauled to the police station in my first novel, Round Rock<\/em>, which was named for a drunk farm near Piru, California, where round rocks occur naturally in the riverbed\u2014it had nothing to do with Texas. My friend read two pages of this novel and phoned, furious. Not only had I named my novel after the place where she used to live, I\u2019d put her words into my character\u2019s mouth. \u201cYou stole my life!\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure, for a few moments, she felt burgled and betrayed. I\u2019d felt that way, too, when reading about La Dershowitz in East Is East<\/em>. The first wash of it is the worst.<\/p>\n

So why are we so shocked, startled, and gut-socked to glimpse ourselves on the page?<\/p>\n

Not long ago, I opened my MacBook Air to see a strange older woman frowning at me. It took a moment to realize I\u2019d accidentally opened Photo Gallery and\u2014horrors upon horrors\u2014that big-nosed grouch was me.<\/p>\n

An unexpected reflection of self rarely provokes joy.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Because the shock of recognition is so acute, the fictionalized often fail to grasp how impersonally their \u201cpersonal\u201d material is used\u2014or how minor a role \u201ctheir\u201d material plays.<\/p>\n

As a novelist, I tend to know significantly more about my characters than I do about my friends. (For example, I do not necessarily know my friends\u2019 preferred brand of shampoo, or their dental histories, or how they behave in bed.) Even when I\u2019ve borrowed a character from life, I have to fill in a lot of blanks, not to mention make them do things they\u2019ve never done in life. Often, it\u2019s this auxiliary material that the fictionalized find especially painful, for they see in it a kind of subconscious, inadvertent truth telling.<\/p>\n

It is not uncommon for the fictionalized to assume that the writer has revealed the real, possibly hidden way they feel and think about a person. Another correspondent writes of seeing herself in a friend\u2019s work: \u201cIt was deeply unpleasant, unfair, desperately mean but\u2014let\u2019s see, the good side? It was very, very revealing of certain of the author\u2019s subterranean feelings for me\u2014ones I\u2019d long suspected and which she\u2019d always denied.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2028The experience of being fictionalized can be like overhearing people talk about you when they don\u2019t know you\u2019re there. The temptation is to give what you overhear great credence, as if people would only say what they really<\/em> think about you behind your back. But behind your back is also where people are most free to vent, to be peevish, unfair, sniping, and slanted; behind your back is where they are most apt to try out imprecations and outlandish opinions and, in general, to be far less generous or compassionate or accurate than they probably are.<\/p>\n

The laws of literature, like the laws of gossip, usually demand exaggeration, decontextualization, a heightened or minimalized reality, and a lot more shape and order and impact than everyday life. \u201cYou\u2019ve been fictionalized\u201d actually means, \u201cYou\u2019ve been exaggerated!\u201d (Or downplayed!) You\u2019ve been snipped and shaped and built on, face-lifted, aged and\/or repainted for maximum artistic impact.<\/p>\n

It would be naive to claim there aren\u2019t writers who write from a deep sense of rage, a yearning for justice, a need to get something off their chests. Certainly, some writers do take personal revenge in their work, and yes, some do spill all kinds of unconscious matter onto the page.<\/p>\n

I knew a writer who kept a list of enemies to be skewered down the line\u2014editors who\u2019d rejected her work, critics who\u2019d been less than kind, colleagues and others who\u2019d slighted her. She did her skewering subtly, mostly in little in-jokes that only she and a few intimates would enjoy. I\u2019m not sure her victims recognized themselves (no fool, she), but revenge is a mighty energy. Why shouldn\u2019t a writer harness such potent wrath from time to time?<\/p>\n

But I would argue that most writers use material in the way a coyote eats a mouse\u2014impersonally, pragmatically, with neither pity nor loathing, to fulfill a need.<\/p>\n

When Tom Boyle caught wind of my dismay those many years ago, he in turn was mortified, and wrote a note saying he\u2019d intended nothing personal at all. I should have known that, too, because all material fed into T.\u2009C.\u2019s brain had a good chance of coming out satirized, outsized, and hilarious.<\/p>\n

Then again, I got off easy. A mutual friend recently wrote, \u201cI learned about my wife\u2019s affair from T.\u2009C.\u2019s book.\u201d (Which book, he didn\u2019t say.)<\/p>\n

\u00a0* * *<\/p>\n

Of course, not everyone objects to being in a novel or story, even if the portrayal is unflattering. I met a man once who, within minutes of our introduction, informed me that he was the prototype for Chip in The Corrections<\/em>\u2014a claim not everyone would be quick to make. And my neighbor happily tells people that she\u2019s a character in my latest novel, Off Course<\/em>. Actually, she\u2019s part of a composite character, and she never said or did ninety percent of what that character says and does\u2014although she did, like the character in my book, make a great beef stew and manage an apartment complex thirty years ago.<\/p>\n

Boyfriends and girlfriends, says McNamara, are among the most fictionalized, and thus the most outraged. But two of my former boyfriends were flattered to be represented in my fiction. \u201cIt\u2019s an honor to contribute to art,\u201d said one. \u201cI liked that character. He was cool,\u201d said the other. A third boyfriend was so secretive and private, he suffered a kind of preemptive anxiety around me. Whenever I asked even a faintly probing question he\u2019d say, \u201cWhat, are you writing a book?\u201d<\/p>\n

Eventually, yes, I wrote that book.<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s the fictionalizing of a person you don\u2019t even know. In my first novel, the central character is a man named Red Ray. I made him up from whole cloth, or thought I had. At a reading, a stranger came up and told me that he knew Red, who was now living near San Diego.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve been fictionalized, it\u2019s unlikely that many others will notice you in the story. If they do, it\u2019s unlikely much will be made of your cameo, or even your starring role. Frankly, nobody cares as much as you do. Not one person among many mutual friends has ever suggested that La Dershowitz is a facsimile of me. In fact, I recently went back to East Is East<\/em> to find the passages that had caused such uneasiness twenty years ago. Yes, there, in a subplot, was La Dershowitz and, amid myriad other details, was one glancing reference to restaurant reviews and Cosmo<\/em>. So much else was going on in the book\u2014all of which I\u2019d forgotten\u2014the objectionable details were very far apart. In this reading, it wasn\u2019t even clear if La Dershowitz was untalented. There was certainly nothing to be upset about.<\/p>\n

And yet, once I saw my own worst fears knit into those sentences.<\/p>\n

On seeing oneself in fiction, it might help, then, to attempt a larger view. Take a deep breath. Consider the character your contribution, however inadvertent, to art. Try not to take it so personally. Don\u2019t read too much into it. Cultivate lightness.<\/p>\n

Victoria Patterson, in her debut story collection, Drift<\/em>, drew heavily from growing up in a wealthy seaside community and her parents\u2019 divorce. \u201cIt occurs to me now how very autobiographical the book is,\u201d Patterson writes, \u201cand how painful it must have been for my parents to read it, and how lovely that they still speak to me!\u201d In the book, as in life, the heroine\u2019s mother inappropriately confides in her, divulging that the girl\u2019s father had been \u201ca marginal lover.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the collection came out, Patterson\u2019s father phoned her. \u201cI\u2019m happy to report some improvement,\u201d he said. \u201cI can now say I\u2019m a solidly average lover.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michelle Huneven is the author of the novels <\/em>Off Course<\/a>; <\/em>Blame, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; <\/em>Jamesland; and <\/em>Round Rock. She lives in Altadena, California, with her husband, Jim Potter.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Or, Is this really what you think of me? Twenty-odd years ago, T.\u2009C. Boyle asked me about the artists\u2019 colonies I\u2019d been to\u2014he was writing a novel. I described the lunches dropped off on the residents\u2019 porches, the nightly readings and revels. When his book, East Is East, came out, I read a few chapters, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":729,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[1084,4864,14751,14755,14753,11479,71,13729,14752,14757,14756,12251,14754],"class_list":["post-74606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-adaptation","tag-autobiography","tag-being-fictionalized","tag-borrowing","tag-characterization","tag-characters","tag-fiction","tag-novelists","tag-reality","tag-recognition","tag-the-writing-life","tag-theft","tag-truth-in-fiction"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhat Can You Do When You\u2019ve Been Fictionalized?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Michelle Huneven on the experience of being fictionalized by T. C. 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