I have argued against fictionalizing nonfiction before.

When discussing Dave Eggers’ The What, I said the schism between Valentino Achak Deng’s life and Eggers’ novel distracted me.

So you can imagine how I feel about what has been described as a “sexed up” version of the Anne Frank story.

But, the thing is, this one bothers me a lot less after having read an interview with the author.

For those who don’t know, Anne Frank wrote what may have been the most important autobiography ever. As a teenage girl of Jewish faith and descent, she kept a diary while hiding from Nazi soldiers in an attic.

Sharon Dogar has now written a coming-of-age story titled Annexed from the perspective of Peter van Pels, a young man who shared the attic with Anne.

Peter is a real person. In her diary, the 16-year-old boy gave Anne her first kiss, though the relationship ultimately waned when Anne questioned whether her affinity for him was genuine or the result of their proximity and confinement.

I haven’t read Annexed yet. It doesn’t come out until October. But news reports have said that it includes scenes of “Peter yearning for and having a physically intimate relationship with Anne.”

The Sunday Times accused Dogar of “sexing up” the Anne Frank tale, but Dogar protests the implication that she’s exploiting Anne Frank or using her to tell tales of ribaldry.

In an interview with the Guardian, Dogar says of Peter and Anne’s relationship, “in the book the reality of just one truly intimate touch was enough to stop them.”

However, the criticism keeps coming. Anne Frank’s only living relative, Buddy Elias, said, “Anne was not the child she is in this book. I also do not think that their terrible destiny should be used to invent some fictitious story.”

The executive director of the Anne Frank Trust, Gillian Walnes, said, “I really don’t understand why we have to fictionalise the Anne Frank story, when young people engage with it anyway. To me it seems like exploitation. If this woman writer is such a good novelist, why doesn’t she create characters from scratch?”

Both of these criticism are fair, and I might be inclined with them had Dogar not made her own case so well.

In the aforementioned Guardian interview, Dogar said, “The problem is that a writer doesn’t always choose what they write. The idea of this book plagued me for 15 years. I tried quite hard not to write it, mostly because I had similar concerns; I couldn’t do it justice, I wasn’t sure it was legitimate, I didn’t believe I had the talent to portray the horror of the Holocaust. But sometimes stories just come and you can’t stop them.”

The Guardian also published an editorial defending Dogar’s decision:

Do what you like, only do it well – and don’t expect the relatives to approve...

The question of whether authors have the “right” to write about living or real people is not one that should be answered by the caretakers of historical reputation. Fiction is a free-for-all, and as long as an author can find someone who’ll publish what they write (or these days, publish it themselves), there are no actual rules about who or what can be tackled, give or take a few libel laws.

I don’t know if I agree with Dogar or the Guardian’s arguments. (I do think writers should have more standards than libel laws, and writers self-censor all the time.) But they are persuasive enough that I am willing to reserve judgment until I have read, at least, a portion of the book.

That having been said, the standards are raised when you deal with such respected source material. If Dogar succeeds, she’s a genius. If she fails, she’ll be remembered as the person who sexed up Anne Frank.

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

I almost titled this post Revisiting the Nonfiction of Fiction, but I have two problems with that headline.

One, I don’t know if either of our readers are committed enough to remember the original Nonfiction of Fiction post, which discussed Dave Eggers’ What is the What.

Two, who would click on anything titled Revisiting the Nonfiction of Fiction?

Everything about that title bores me, and I wrote it. You can bold it, italicize it — nothing makes it interesting.

Instead, I went with the unpretentious Chevalier on Jane Austen and Dinosaurs, even though it’s factually incorrect for reasons that become clear by the end of this post.

I’ve now wasted four paragraphs without explaining the purpose of this post. Let me take it from the top: I read Tracy Chevalier’s Remarkable Creatures and it’s another one of those let’s-turn-history-into-fiction novels.

I already explained in my Eggers post that I don’t care for the tactic, but it bothers me less in Chevalier’s case, because there is no charity attached. (Not that I think the Valentino Achak Deng’s charity is an unworthy cause. I just question using a fictionalized account of your life to promote it.)

Instead, Chevalier only wants us to enjoy her story and once more ponder how unfair the Victorian era was to women.

Chevalier writes the story of Mary Anning, Elizabeth Philpot and their friendship. Anning is a fossil hunter in the early 1800s who discovered the first complete skeletons of an ichthyosaur and plesiosaur (neither of which were dinosaurs, rendering my headline incorrect.) Anning is a working class gal with little formal education. Yet most of the paleontologists of the day sought her specimens and advice.

Philpot is another fossil hunter. She is older, richer and from a more respected family than Anning, but the two became friends because of a shared hobby.

Chevalier said it was Philpot and Anning’s friendship that drew her to the source material, but she doesn’t emphasize it. Instead, her focus meanders between the fossils, sexism, science vs. faith, and the romantic mishaps of the characters.

Though there’s no hard evidence for it, Chevalier decides to link Anning in an ill-fated romantic relationship with Colonel Birch, one of her collectors.

(Chevalier explains in her afterward: “Of course, I made up plenty. For instance, while there was gossip about Mary and Buckland and Mary and Birch, there was no proof. That is where only a novelist can step in.”)

More than anything, Chevalier seems to want to write Anning’s life as a Jane Austen novel, one in which the heroine does not get her man. Chevalier echoes her tone and language, and her version of Elizabeth Philpot shares some attributes with Elizabeth Bennet. Both struggle with a culture that marginalizes women and both suffer from presumption. Philpot’s relationship with Birch is very Bennet-Darcy.

That’s interesting; because Philpot, who Chevalier writes as a pragmatist, makes a point of disparaging Austen and her happy endings. I’m not suggesting Chevalier has a problem with Austen. Not every opinion espoused by a fictional character is one the author endorses. If anything, I wonder if Chevalier felt the need to differentiate between Austen’s stories and her own.

It’s true that Chevalier’s story is more firmly based in reality. There are no improbable marriages in Remarkable Creatures, but that doesn’t make it better than a weel-written, if frivolous, love story.

Chevalier is a good writer. Her language flows; but her focus meanders, and she’s unable to build any momentum. If we were to break out the old Jason Lea Rating System [seen below], I’d rank it as a 3. Remarkable Creatures will not be anyone’s favorite, but it would be too harsh to call it bad.

Jason Lea Ranking System:
5 - Wu-Tang Clan
4 - Delonte West YouTube interviews
3 - Celebrity guest appearances on sitcoms
2 - Olive Garden commercials
1 - New York Yankees

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

P.S. In light of Delonte West’s recent personal and legal struggles, it seems tactful to take him off the scale. Likewise, the Olive Garden commercials that offend me no longer air, so it’s a dated reference. It may be time to revise the ranking system.

I just read Jason's post and, while I have not read the novel, it's prompted some thoughts.

Like him I wonder, why fictionalize? The story sounds as if it's strong enough on its own. In fact, it likely would resonate more with readers as a nonfiction account. Certainly concerns about condensing time could be addressed while keeping it a true story.

I just read "The Last Nine Minutes" which is the true account of Flight 981. Moira Johnston's work is a detailed examination of the investigation into the cause of a DC-10 crash that killed all 346 people on board just nine minutes after takeoff from Paris.

It was the first crash of a wide-body jet and at the time (1974) the largest aviation disaster.

I'll admit, at times, the writing is a bit dry, and the title is somewhat misleading since there is little to indicate what those nine minutes of flight were like. But, on the whole, Johnston delivers a fascinating account into a tragedy many feel could have been avoided.

I particularly noticed those events that would never occur today.

Things like the airline did not have an accurate passenger manifest. They knew who tickets were issued to, but anyone could board with the ticket. Several members of a rugby club had passed their tickets on to others. Can you imagine such a thing happening circa 2009?!

Things like allowing family members to get their information on the crash from televised news reports.

Things like the challenges of identifying remains pre-DNA tests.

At the time the work was published the courtroom battles over the disaster were ongoing.

I have to say, the book renewed my interest in real-life disaster works.

Got any suggestions?

- Tricia Ambrose

I realize I’m about three years late, but I finally read Dave Eggers’s What is the What.

I enjoyed The What, not as much as the critics who dubbed it “(an) improbably beautiful book,” “an eloquent testimony to the power of storytelling” and “an absolute classic.” (Those comments came from Time, New York Times Book Review and People, respectively, in case you care.)

I hesitate to call anything a classic. I feel like time is the only thing that can make that distinction. (Time, not Time.) But Eggers made me care about his subject — Valentino Achack Deng, one of the so-called Lost Boys of Sudan — which is probably what matters most to Eggers.

I don’t intend to recount Eggers’s story, which is really Deng’s story. Eggers does it well enough. If you are in the least bit curious about the civil wars of Sudan, its Lost Boys or the genocide in Darfur, you should read the book. In fact, if you aren’t curious, you should still read the first few chapters to see if you become interested. Yes, Deng’s story is that important.

What intrigued me enough to write about The What is less important that the story itself. It is a matter of designation.

On the title page of The What, Eggers describes the book as both The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng and a novel. But this isn’t the fictional autobiography of a character. Deng is a real person. He walked across Sudan to Ethiopia, then to Kenya. He saw fellow travelers killed by war, lions, crocodiles and disease.

So why is Eggers writing a novel instead of a biography?

This is a question that critics seemingly glossed over. “Novel, autobiography, whatever...” New York Times said in its review. But it is not a whatever. The truth matters when we are talking about real people, all the more because the book raises money for a foundation.

Why does Eggers fictionalize Deng’s story? Why does Deng let him?

Deng explains in the preface, “I told my story to the author. He then concocted this novel, approximating my own voice and using the basic events of my life as the foundation.”

Deng elaborates in an interview:

It is very close to the truth, but many things in the book are somewhat different than what happened in life. Some characters have been combined. Some time is compressed. They are minor things, but they were necessary.

Eggers adds in the same interview:

All of the events in the book have historical basis. But it really is a novel. I made up many scenes that were necessary to describe the whole sweep of those twenty or so years that the book covers. Sometimes I’d read a human rights report about a certain incident during the civil war, and would ask Val if he knew someone who had experienced that incident, or something like it. Sometimes he did know someone, and we could go from there, but other times I had to imagine it on my own. Some of these scenes were necessary to include, even if Val didn’t have personal experience with them.

Perhaps, it is because I am a journalist by trade, but this explanation does not assuage me. After reading this interview, I immediately wanted to know what parts of The What are from Deng, what parts came from other sources, and what parts did Eggers imagine.

I’m not suggesting that Eggers or Deng are trying to be dishonest. Their hearts are in the right place. They had a story they wanted to tell — a worthwhile story, a moving story. But they decided the most effective way to tell Deng’s story was to change it until The What could no longer be classified as nonfiction.

While it is effective, The What is no longer wholly true; and you wander toward Jayson Blair territory when you sacrifice truth for the sake of story. (The primary difference is, of course, Eggers acknowledges that he deviates from Deng’s story.)

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

The cliché used to be that history was written by the winners. Then, Max Lerner revised it, saying “History is written by the survivors.”

Now, Ernest Hemingway’s grandson has proven history can be revised by the progeny.

Seán Hemingway has re-edited his grandfather’s memoir “A Moveable Feast,” casting Papa as equally culpable in his first divorce.

First, some back story is in order. Hemingway divorced four times. “Feast” included the story of how Hemingway left his first wife, Hadley Richardson, for her friend, Pauline Pfeiffer.

“Feast”—which was cobbled together posthumously by Hemingway’s fourth wife using unpublished scraps—placed the onus for the divorce primarily on Pfeiffer. Hemingway is portrayed as the prey, Pfeiffer as predator.

Seán Hemingway is Pfeiffer and Hemingway’s grandson. He has included other unpublished Hemingway passages in a new edition of the memoir. If the new passages do not exonerate Pfeiffer, they make Hemingway equally guilty.

I’m not here to hash out Papa’s romantic history. My question is this: How valid is this sort of revisionist history?

I’d argue that it’s fair for three reasons.

One, “A Moveable Feast” was never a Hemingway-sanctioned manuscript. He made it clear that it was an unfinished piece shortly before it died. So it can’t be treated as an accurate history, or even as an accurate portrayal of how Hemingway wanted to be remembered.

Instead, it can only be treated as how Hemingway’s fourth wife, Mary Hemingway, wanted him to be remembered.

Similarly, this new edition is how Seán Hemingway wants Hemingway (and his grandmother) to be portrayed.

Two, both are still using Hemingway’s words. It’s not like Mary or Seán Hemingway wrote unauthorized biographies. Even if Hemingway’s stories are not edited as he would have liked, at least they are his stories.

While Hemingway’s mind could change (as proven by his several divorces), at least the words Seán used were true to his grandfather when he wrote them.

Finally, any nonfiction that involves an opinion or supposition is a fallacy. Margaret Atwood wrote:

It’s impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because what you say can never be exact, you always have to leave something out, there are too many parts, sides, crosscurrents, nuances; too many gestures, which could mean this or that, too many shapes which can never be fully described, too many flavors in the air or on the tongue, half-colors, too many.

We cannot write things exactly as they were. (This is something I struggle with everyday as a newspaper writer.) Even the most objective writer must still decide what details are worth including, what statements merit quoting.

You can try to be fair. You can try to be objective. You can try to be accurate. Ultimately, you must admit what you write is an account of the events, not the account of the events.

This doesn’t mean Mary, Seán or even Ernest Hemingway are liars. It just means most things in life are subjective. “A Moveable Feast” is no exception.

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com