Monthly Archives: May 2010

Telling Stories. Or, Brenna Talks Ethics (sort of)

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Lately, I’ve been thinking about high school. (That’s a joke, by the way—I rarely stop.) Specifically, I’ve been thinking about the problem of what I want to say and how I want to say it.

There’s no legal precedent that says a person can’t write about another person. If you change names, blur faces, skip the libel and the defamation, it’s well within your rights. But that’s the legal stuff. The ethical concerns are more complex, and those are the ones that matter here. It seems presumptuous to turn the spotlight on someone else. Worse, it seems like bad manners. People feel exposed, even if no one can see them standing there.

Little Sister Yovanoff said, “I was reading your blog about Irish the other day. I was thinking how there are maybe five people in the world who would see it and even know who you were talking about.”

And this is the truth. No one will recognize the people in my stories. No one is going to stumble upon an isolated anecdote, then turn to a friend or a coworker and say, Stop me if I’m wrong, but I think that’s you.

But people will recognize themselves.* They’ll see their likenesses, hear their own voices coming from someplace else. The more personal the story, the more likely they are to recognize themselves, even seen imperfectly through someone else’s lens, and that recognition can’t ever be counteracted by aliases and clever nicknames. Someone might read a particular story and remember how the moment felt. It might not always feel good. I know that, and it raises some very important issues about responsibility.

Here is the thing about telling the truth. To write about someone honestly, I think you have to love them a little, even though loving is not the same as knowing. People deserve to be handled with care, and I have a responsibility to be careful, and also to be honest. And yes, that’s scary. (I have spent most of my life avoiding responsibility.)

When I can, I tell people what I’m doing, let them decide if what I’ve written is okay, or if it’s too much.** It’s not perfect, but it’s the most workable solution I’ve found. Of course, another solution would be to stop writing about other people, but that comes with its own set of problems. What I’ve found is that writing about yourself and writing about other people are not always separate. Because the thing is, sometimes your stories are also their stories.

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Irish

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For the first three months of school, I had no friends. I realize how unbearably tragic that sounds, but it really wasn’t that bad. This is partially because I was so preoccupied with the novelty of my new environment, and partially because I was just a very un-tragic person. In fact, for the most part, I didn’t even realize I was lonely—I honestly assumed that what I was feeling was a general condition.

And to be fair, I did nothing to facilitate making friends. I had a different paperback for every class. I lined them up in order on my locker shelf and read them under my desk. When people tried to talk to me, it took all my mental faculties just to respond, and the effort of making small-talk was exhausting (since then, I’ve realized that it’s not strangers I find so exhausting—it’s small-talk).

No one was mean to me, or if they were, I didn’t really care. They ignored me, and I concentrated on my books and on writing things down as they happened. Once, a boy in my Spanish class licked my face, just to see what I would do. My reaction underlined the very thing that had made him want to shake me up in the first place. I did . . . approximately nothing. I turned in my seat and said in a dazed, dreamy voice, “Oh my God, that’s disgusting.” I still can’t picture the look I gave him, but I remember how it felt—quizzical, wondering. My heart was beating so hard I thought it might burst like a balloon, but none of the underlying shock was apparent in my face or my voice, and after that, he left me alone. Everyone left me alone. Then, this happened:

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