Fiction writing has always seemed to elude me. I often thought I ought to try it but failed. I have over just the last eighteen years, each month written four pages of writing and none of it as I recall could be classified as fiction. (Except some of my readers might think so!)
I recall in the year 2000 June and I were staying with two of my nieces in Townsends Inlet, New Jersey. It is located at the south end of the island that has Sea Isle City as its main settlement. North of Sea Isle City is Strathmere and then Corson’s Inlet. Sea Isle City was where I spent the summers growing up. I think Dad sold the house there in 1952 after Mom died. Sea Isle was also the place where I ran a footrace. It covered the whole island and started at the same street, 45th, where our summerhouse stood. The run was mostly on the beach and some on the boardwalk. So being back in Townsends Inlet brought back a lot of memories and while we were there a sad one was created in that my sister Anne died.
On one morning while in the Inlet June and I went for a walk. We went over the bridge from Townsends Inlet on to the next island that was Avalon. We had owned and lived many summers in a condo in Avalon. It was one of the first buildings you could see as you came off the bridge on to the Avalon Island. Bridges seemed to be one of better places for fishing. You always found cars and men down below and under the bridge fishing. So as we came down the Avalon side of the bridge it was no surprise to see a number of cars parked along the road and men fishing. But one car caught my attention since it had a man in the driver’s seat munching on a large hoagie. He didn’t seem to have any equipment about that indicated he was there to go fishing. So I started to muse…fictionalize… that he was on one of those diets that I have often been made to use that prohibited this kind of sandwich. He was parked there to be inconspicuous as he ate the forbidden sandwich. I went on to think of how he was fooling his wife, whom I named Jenny, about his eating. But I then, in my fictionalizing, had him head home and get ready for work. There I got lost…what did my character do other than cheat about eating? My fictional thinking kept me looking for facts. A habit of a lifetime of looking for the facts in order to make an argument reasonable. But as I offer this excuse I recalled many cross-examinations in which I made up facts to contest what the witness had said. Many of which could be classified as ‘fiction’. But again the conditions and the surroundings of the creation took it really out of the realm of ‘fiction’. So I am now resolved and note that I am not a fiction writer.
Speaking of fiction, I am reading a biography of one of America’s great fiction writers, Ernest Hemingway. In it he is quoted as saying: “Fiction is inventing out of what knowledge you have. If you invent successfully, it is more true than if you try to remember it. A big lie is more plausible than truth. People who write fiction, if they had not taken it up, might have become very successful liars”(p.199). Standard dictionaries usually have this definition for the word. Fiction (Latin: fictum, “created”) is a branch of literature which deals, in part or in whole, with temporally contrafactual events (events that are not true at the time of writing). In contrast to this is non-fiction, which deals exclusively in factual events (e.g. biographies, histories).
The book “Papa Hemingway, personal memoir” is not an official biography. It is a memoir by A.E.Hotchner, a journalist, dramatist, and writer who tells of his friendship over many years with Ernest. He met him on an assignment for a magazine to interview him for his thoughts on the “future of literature”. Hotchner thought the subject absurd and was tempted to skip his visit with Hemingway. However he went. It was in 1948 and he became a friend, advisor, and encourager to Hemmingway for the rest of his life. One very interesting part of the memoir is his recording of Hemingway talking to a group of students. He answered their many questions; one of the answers was his definition of fiction, which we quote above. He also told them he had written thirteen books. I learned some things I never knew about Hemmingway. He had children…I think two boys and a girl over four marriages. One of the sons became a headhunter in Africa, a country that Hemmingway loved and visited many times for hunting. He tells the class in answering questions: ‘‘Some countries you love some you can’t stand, I love that one. There are some places in Idaho that are like a Africa and Spain. That’s why so many Basques come here.”
The last few months before July 1961 when Hemingway commits suicide Hotchner is with him and suffers as he sees is good friend deteriorate. Writing was his life. Dr. Vernon, Hemmingway’s personal physician states, “Hutch (the author), he won’t ever write again. He can’t. He’s given up. That his motivation for doing away with himself” Hemmingway himself says to Hotchner, “Hotch, if I can’t exist on my own terms, than existence is impossible. Do you understand? That’s is how I lived and this is how I must live – or not live” During this period of his life he is constantly telling Hotch how his house is wired by the FBI, he is being tailed by them, strangers he sees at the bar are agents, etc. etc.
Hemmingway makes one attempt to take his life but that is thwarted by his wife. He then is sent for many months to the Mayo Clinic, but the disease persist and he takes his life. His diagnosis was ‘depressive persecutory’. His father had committed suicide; he had a daughter who also did so. Some psychiatrists suggested it be in the genes. It was a sad ending to a very productive life.
Another fiction writer I am reading is Henry James. He was big on short stories. He wrote more than a hundred of them! It is written in the English of over 100 years ago. He lived from 1843 till 1916.Here is a sentence from “The Story of a Year” published in Atlantic Monthly in 1865.
“In early May, two years ago, a young couple I wot of strolled homeward from an evening walk, a long ramble among the peaceful hills which inclosed their rustic home.” Now the word ‘wot’ is one you won’t see today. It has a meaning of “know”. It is somehow derived from ‘wit’ but even that makes no sense in our English of today. Another word is “inclosed” which today would be ‘enclosed’. He wrote novels too one which I remember of the entitled “The Turning of the Screw” but can’t remember anything about its contents. His brother William James was a well-known Philosopher and Psychologist and his sister Alice, a diarist.
The “St. Petersburg Times” in a Sunday section entitled “Perspective” reported on a book recently published entitled “Letters to Jackie: Condolences From a Grieving America” by Ellen Fitzpatrick. It printed one example of such letters. It was written by a first grade teacher in the State of Washington. It told of the reaction of those students to the sad news. Condolences to Jackie reminded me of my brother Dick, a Jesuit priest then teaching at Georgetown University going to Bob Kennedy’s home to help Jackie with her grief. The way he could do that without the media learning of it was that along with being listed as a teacher at Georgetown he was also listed as their tennis coach. He had played tennis all his life. He had I believe gone to Bob Kennedy’s home previously to actually do that. So his going at this time would not rouse media interest. I later remember him appearing in a picture in the ‘NYTimes’ with John-John (as he was then called) sitting on his lap at the “World’s Fair” in that city.
Speaking of ‘fiction’ who would have thought that a priest/tennis coach would be called upon to help the widow of the President of United States with her grief upon his being killed. It is a good illustration to me of the axiom; “Truth is stranger than fiction”!
Until next time Pax Tecum!