Truth in Autobiography

Let two propositions be our starting paradox.

The one is that everything in an autobiographical novel is true.

The other says that nothing is true in an autobiographical novel because all narrative is fictional by nature: just a story, made that way to satisfy the demands of style and literary quality. We expect it to be credible on a human level, to reflect our own selves, to seduce our memories. Such is its truth.

You say one thing, I another. "I think this is how it happened; this is the truth as I know it." Such is my testimony before a court of the imagination.

Word of honor.

I hereby inform you that all autobiographical writings I have submitted have been approved in an official court examination. What is more, they are supported by the testimony of my surviving loved ones and friends. Word of honor.

What's that you say? Verification? When pigs fly!

But you don't pick up an autobiographical novel for its unalloyed truth anyway. There must be some other reason. Perhaps for the tale itself, just as the gentlemen in the salons of old style houses of pleasure were not after pure love—though they were obviously looking for something.

There is no instrument for measuring the truth of a writer's autobiography, other than our own sensitivity as readers. But writing of quality will always be true, for it has the person—the author—standing behind it. He steps through it to stand before our eyes.

The writer of a good text might be a lying fiend in civilian life, but his powers of evocation move me to accept what he says as true. Not just any rogue scoundrel can take me in—but if the bastard manages to do it; well, all right then, let's raise our glasses together.

We can relativize the truth of an autobiography ad infinitum. Because if there is such a thing as the truth of my life, then it changes constantly, just as I do. Even if I approve of what I wrote last year, today I would still write it differently.

But what is the point of all this scrutiny?

I was expelled from university in April of 1953—that is, after the death of Stalin, when the authorities could begin to sense that things would loosen up a bit—because the Party secretary of my childhood town thought that my father, a merchant, had had more employees than I recounted in my compulsory autobiography. Hence I was a class enemy like my father.

Making people write autobiographies was also the main event in the ritual of political detention. They gave you time to do the job, and the idea was to include as many names and details as possible. This testimony would be examined to expose internal contradictions and compared with that of others to expose contradictions and untruths. Then screenwriters would work up the material.

Under a dictatorship, every piece of information can be used against somebody, and every statement can be turned against its writer like the edge of a knife. Now you've done it—given yourself away! Now you'll get what's coming to you.

But if the events in question are in the past (which they will never be entirely), then why not just perform mnemonic experiments as a form of testimony?

The difference between autobiography and fiction is the value we place on facts, on the notion that it happened just like this. In doing so, we discover a special and surprising kind of truth—as well as the extremely novelistic qualities of ordinary reality.

The child I write about? Yes, he is here, poking his head out of me. And yes, I invited that young man here, the one who chases women—just watch!—and seeks out new acquaintances continually, to keep the day from ever ending.

As long as they are here, stepping forth from the rooms of memory, bringing the narrator pleasure, he observes them as images, as metaphors from the flickering past.

Our heads are...