Our Obsession with the Truth

In the long ago hit movie A Few Good Men, Jack Nicholson utters the now famous catch phrase "You can't handle the truth." But for American readers today it seems it is the fiction they can't handle. This week another memoir was revealed to be more fabrication than family history, leaving the publishing industry and the reading public disillusioned and disappointed. The story of a couple who found love from behind the chain link of a concentration camp has been revealed to be a fake. The story goes that the young man is kept alive from food thrown over the fence by a young girl who years later he meets on a chance blind date and marries. Apparently, Oprah was so moved by the story and called it the best love story she had ever heard. I too have a big gullible heart that falls for every sad. sap story within ear shot, so I do feel a little bad for Oprah. At least when I believe the story about the guy surfing the tsunami the whole world doesn't find about it. Obviously, Oprah is an extremely smart and savvy person or she would not be enjoying tremendous success for the past twenty years. I would never call Oprah a sucker but I would say she really loves a good story and more often the truth is getting in the way of a good story. And I think the problem is that we as a country are just a little caught up with the truth. Who's to say that two people in concentration camps did not meet, fall in love, become separated and then reunited by chance. I am sure it happened. It just didn't happen these two. Just like there are a lot of people who have spent time in jail, overcame addiction, got beat up, and then put there life back together it just didn't really happen to James Frey. Don't get me wrong, I don't think people should lie and call their books memoirs when they are truly fabricated I just think that this outbreak of fake memoirs is askiing some interesting questions about our value of stories and truth in this country. I am excited to read the Lazarus Project this year, which I read examines this subject in a lot of detail. Written by an eastern European immigrant, who familliar with our culture and his own less than truth obsessed country, has a interesting perspective on American's sense of honesty in story telling. And that the truth bllaaaahhhhhh! (a la Lily Tomlin)