Pissing off the Parents

(Whew, caught the typo...)

I was wondering when you would notice that...

(For those who didn't see it I originally entitled this "Pissing of the Parents." Eh?)

This is open to anyone, not just writers, btw. The questions about what you think of an author who does that for example.

I think parenting is a thankless job by and large, but we try our best anyway. sometimes that's enough, sometimes not.

It's a tough one. I think, if it were me, I would either write it under a pen name and change certain details to protect the innocent (if possible) or find some way to give them credit for something.

I don't know. I'm trying to imagine the book my children would one day write about me and how I would feel about it.

How do you know it's true?

Perhaps some of it, all of it, little of it. Who knows?

HIS perception; I'm sure there's another version. Then there's the truth.


Go ahead and write your book. Tell the story . . . Call it Fiction.

"Portnoy's Complaint" was fiction...

People will recognize themselves. And a certain kind of fiction is always considered autobiographical. I'm deaf -- that'd certainly be a part of whatever I'd write. I could try to make the protagonist male and black or something to try to throw off the scent, but what I have in mind WOULD be largely autobiographical.

I thought of pen names too, and that's probably most practical... it's already a leap to imagine finishing a manuscript, a further leap to imagine it being published, and a much larger leap yet to imagine it garnering such acclaim that enterprising journalists expose the "real" author. (Not to mention just author's photos and interviews and the like.) Yet, that's where my imagination takes me. Pen names seem too fragile these days.

I guess I could still use that as an excuse, though -- "I didn't mean for you to ever know about it!"

Sigh...

You might consider posthumous publication.

I'm more for writing it than not, I say somewhat warily.





Easy for me to say, though, with my parents long departed.

Heh, I've thought about this too. One of the best things I've ever written has only been read by my husband and one teacher because of this problem...

I've never felt like an author of a really scathing memoir was a mean person for being willing to do it; there's something to be said for being capable of such straighforwardness with airing your thoughts -- I wouldn't have the courage to do it, no matter how justified I felt. I always assume their version is colored by their bias, too, though, as Sullyfish points out.

I really do doubt that there's any way to really keep people from recognizing themselves in an autobiographical book, too; imagine how hard you'd be scrutinizing something like that written by someone you knew, to see if you could find yourself in there! And you pointed out the flimsiness of a pen-name -- and what are you gonna do, write a book while telling yourself, "Ehh, no one's going to read this thing anyway!" I think you'd have to accept that chances are you'd have to deal with the fallout at some point...

I'm also aware of changing attitude on my part re a number of things over time as I've lived through a lot of decades myself. Not that things gain in rosiness, but my aggravation has been tempered with appreciation of my own stupidities.

What then, write it young so the book has some verve...

i have a book in mind to write with my sister and my mother about my father. There are things that will be painful. Fortunately all of us are open enough towards introspection, yet introverted so that many important communication happened over letters and emails and this will be more of the same process.
And I know I will have to talk a lot with my father and mother while writing.
Perhaps you could draw your family into the process as well and resolve some of the issues at the same time you're writing about them?

Hmmm, one of my old bosses is a fairly well published writer of medical thrillers. I can recognize some of his cohorts in a few of the books, especially the early ones. One was the villain....


This is of course is a tangent re the kind of book you are talking about, Soz.

Robin Cook? Uh...hmm... not my genre, who else writes those things? *racking brain*

---------

Sorry, osso, I'm just teasing! I know you won't say, but I just gotta guess, you know!

I'd like to hope that the better the literary quality of the book, the less offensive the book would be to the people who provided the raw material.

At present the lines between fiction and reality are becoming very blurry as are the distinctions between Public and Private life.

I wonder whether the skewed ratio of Male to Female authors is related to this problem?

Interesting question.

By the way, the two books I mention are much, much worse than anything I would write. My parents would probably not be central characters at all -- it wouldn't be ABOUT them in any way, it would be about other things. But they are part of the story.

Cyphercat, yeah, several of my favorite short stories have also been read by just professors and E.G. Same idea. Definitely part of this... I start to write in that way, imagining just professors or faceless readers reading it, and then imagine my parents reading it and whoomph. Inhibition.

I've been here and gone a few times. Started responding and changed my mind. The bottom line is I'm torn. On the one hand, I think you owe it to yourself to write the book with honesty. On the other hand, there are living people who could be hurt by it. How do you reconcile this?

Talk to them? Warn them? Will this lessen the hurt? I don't know. If the book is to be largely autobiographical, then you know what will happen and who will do and say what. If it's more fiction than fact, then you have some leeway. But the truth will be there.

Do you think that discussing it with your parents will ease the situation? Might such a discussion sway you or change your views?

What it boils down to, soz, is that you're the only one who knows what you will write. The only one who can guess at your parents' reactions.

Wish I could be more decisive, but this is a toughy.

My feeling is that you go ahead and tell the truth--particularly if you intend to publish. Otherwise, you are fostering and passing along inaccurate information, and you may end up misleading people who definitely don't deserve to be misled.

When my childhood memoir was published, the only close family member still alive was my stepmother, who was then 92. There was information about my father that really surprised her, even though they had been married almost 40 years when he died. Some of the prose portraits of my dad [the memoir was structured as 35 chronologically arranged prose portraits of people who had made, on a particular occasion in my youth (up to age 17), a large effect on how I thought about things] were probably tough for my stepmother to read, but she LOVED learning new events from my and my father's earlier lives--and she told me so. Both my parents were alcoholics; both were very high achievers--my mother in the arts, my father in the intelligence-collection world. They would do really strange stuff! So did many of their friends. But, hey, my childhood wasn't dull, and, although I know they were about the last parents one would wish on any child, I knew that they loved me, and, although they would take me into dangerous situations, I never felt at risk--because they'd protect me. Despite their craziness, they truly loved me, and I never was abused in any way--except in the minds of those who see exposure to risk as abuse.

My advice: go for it--the real it! People may be grateful, even if some of the memories of them and their friends are a bit harsh. People love, and, at some level, appreciate the true story. If living subjects are not happy about what you've written, tough--unless one is planning to write something so devastating that the subject will commit suicide. I would NOT write that kind of material while the subject is alive. Most people can live with unflattering detail that is presented in a non-judgmental way. There's another piece of advice for memoirists: try to be scrupulously non-judgmental.

Start writing now, while the memories are fresh. I waited until I was almost 60, and the memory work was so tough that it took me 2.5 years for a relatively short book. Aaargh.

Write it. Then worry about publishing it.