Blogs
Great Travelers or Great Liars?
The Endless Road
To what extent are writers capturing the hardships and dilemmas of traveling on the road? While reading the selected articles, it became apparent that there are different versions of life on the travel road is like. Some authors faced danger; others faced an awakening of terrible conditions, while others simply just watched what was happening. There is always a battle in keeping the integrity of a story as realistic as possible. Should writers just separate themselves apart from the circumstances? After spending months, even years on the road, how do they translate these multiple experiences into a sincere account?
Hickok’s “One Third Of a Nation”, Asch’s “The Road”, and Anderson’s “At the Mine Mouth” all exemplify the author’s genuine description of life across America. The aim for Hickok was “to go out around the country and look this thing over. I don’t want statistics from you. I don’t want the social-worker angle. I just want your own reaction, as an ordinary citizen. Go talk with preachers and teachers, businessmen, workers, farmers. Go talk to the unemployed, those who are on relief and those who aren’t. And when you talk with them don’t ever forget that but for the grace of God you, I, and of our friends might be in their shoes. Tell me what you see and hear. All of it.” Every writer faces the challenge of how to tell his or her story. Even today, authors such as James Frey (A Million Little Pieces) choose to convey the message they want to show the world. In Asch’s The Road, regular citizens he encounters misconstrue the truth without him needing to embellish anything,” The girl I had talked to and said she was a secretary, then it had come out she was a house servant.” In Adamic’s “My America,” it is amazingly surprising, as discussed in class, how lucky this female hitchhiker was to never have gotten raped or murdered along her travels.
As an individual and nothing more, writers in this time period were sent to feel, to live, to experience what life was like for many struggling Americans. They were sent to tell their story, and keeping the validity of their stories is vital to its entire purpose. In a society where fabrication prevails the truth, it’s become harder to trust what we read is legitimate. Without truth, many stories can become a piece of fiction.
"Most writers regard truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use." - Mark Twain
Truth Or Something Like It
The types of writing we’ve explored in this class seem especially concerned with this question of blurring the line between fact and fiction, and how ethical that is. Your post brings up an interesting angle on this question: does the writer even know when he’s blurring the line between fact and fiction? Sometimes, I think he doesn’t, because sometimes it’s impossible to separate one’s own ideologies from one’s own writing. But obviously at times he does realize this, which brings to mind another question: should a writer exaggerate or worsen details of someone’s life in order to strengthen a point about some large idea they’re tackling (poverty, government, etc.)? Or should they gloss over the messier points because they are simply to terrible to recount, and would be almost vulgar or unfeeling to reveal? Writers have struggled with whether or not they are exploiting impoverished people by writing about their trials for years, in many different countries and in many different situations. For example, Dostoevsky’s Poor People deals with that problem, as do many of Gogol’s texts.