Local ascendant writer Nicole Helget is facing some very public heat from her family following the accolades heaped on her memoir, The Summer of Ordinary Ways. Helget, who also won this year’s Tamarack Award, started writing after leaving her husband for her composition professor. Her depictions of growing up in a rural Minnesota farming family have been challenged by her ex-husband, mother, and sisters. Says one sister, “We don’t know where this darkness [in her writing] came from. She was popular, fun, beautiful, good at softball and volleyball.” Adds her father: “I never stuck a cow to death.” But when the writing is really good, how much does factual accuracy matter?
Family Circus, Literary Memior Edition
Dec 15 2005 — 2:00am
16 Reader Comments
1:29 pm
“But when the writing is really good, how much does factual accuracy matter?”
0%
1:30 pm
Some members of the mnspeak community have had to deal with this issue- I don’t think I would like it if someone I knew wrote about me in a memior and the portrayal was unflattering- and it would seem especially unfair if the negative stuff didn’t actually happen.
1:32 pm
I don’t have a problem with fictional writing at all, I think that it often ends up turning into something way more interesting and there is less holding back when discussing personal thoughts and feelings.
What I do question is why she defines it as a memoir, if in fact those are fictional elements; and the fact that it is associated with MN Historical Society’s booksellers. If you are writing under the pretense of nonfiction, why turn it into something else? That seems odd.
1:32 pm
85%.
1:39 pm
I think she contends the events actually happened, and it’s therefore a memoir.
Since I know this issue a little too closely, I’ll say that the difficulty here is defining “truth.” There are all kinds of reasons that stories are abridged, modified, etc. — and many times, the reasons are to get at “the truth” in a way that “just the facts” couldn’t.
What you end up striving for is something a little different than “truth” — you try to be fair. That’s the best you can hope for when people write about you — that they’re fair.
1:55 pm
Which reminds me of a joke I heard: What do you get when you cross an “agile billy goat” with a “modish redhead?” Shit, I can’t remember the punchline!
2:04 pm
Once again, someone’s going to have to explain a Sarah joke to me.
2:22 pm
I think we could play guess the punchline and crack the top ten biggest message threads. My guess is: Brock Lesnar.
But seriously folks, I actually kind of want to read this girl’s memoir. True or not, it sounds like a good read.
2:37 pm
If it’s a memoir, and people’s lives are being judged in a public way for posterity, truth matters a great deal. Of course, there are huge differences of opinion about what the truth of any particular incident is. And every memoir demands that some material be excluded and that included material be shaped. But if you feel the pressing artistic need to distort factual material, you should write fiction.
2:42 pm
Oh, I just realized what Sarah’s joke is. “Modish redhead” is how I’m introduced in this book and “agile goat” is how I’m described in this one.
Which just goes to show that truth, once again, isn’t fact — and sometimes it’s not even good fiction.
4:16 pm
but isn’t this whole blurring of fiction and nonfiction and whose version of the truth we’re looking at what “memoir” is all about? i’m not saying that i’m endorsing the genre (or damning it), but if it was all just going to be straight up facts wouldn’t it be labeled autobiography instead?
although in most book stores the memoirs, biographys etc are all lumped in one category anway.
6:02 pm
I agree that it’s impossible to have a completely “true” memoir, but when nearly all the people depicted in the book claim it’s fiction, then what type of credibility does that bring to the author and the work? I know when I read a memoir, part of my interest is the veracity of the characters and situations.
On the other hand, I agree with Rex’s comnent — facts and truth aren’t always the same thing. But I do think if the truth is revealed in analogy or fiction, there should be an admission to this format.
In other news, I bet her father loves that his thoughts on the matter were summed up with: “I never stuck a cow to death.” I think that’d make a good epitaph.
7:21 pm
I agree with zoziablu and would only add that to some extent, to people who’ve thought about the genre as a genre, memoir is about how hard it is to get at truth (or fairness). But to me that’s more chastening than liberating. I still think you have to be careful.
12:49 pm
who cares what she writes. like she says it’s her memory. but from what I’ve heard (like from her own family), she’s a nut-job and I won’t be reading the book
6:28 pm
I find it interesting that an author can write about people and things that never happened and call it a memoir. I agree that if you are writing about real people, the truth does matter a great deal. Furthermore, I have always assumed that books published by the MN Historical Society are about REAL events. I feel that it is their responsibility and JOBS to research what it is they are actually publishing. Personally, I have lost a tremendous amount of respect for that organization. It is encouraging to see a family that is standing up for themselves. The author clearly has no creativity considering she has nothing else to write about besides her family.
4:03 am
Go to Mankato State. Become a real writer, yuk yuk!