What to say about the gaping hole of pain which is the current Myerson family debacle? My stomach lurched when I read Jake Myerson's account in the Daily Mail, I cried when I watched Julie squirming under Paxman's unforgiving treatment, struggling to put her point across while clearly racked by both guilt and a frightened sense of injustice. My stomach turned over again when I read all the finger-pointing by journalists and the public alike: bad mother; spoilt brat.
How many of us can put up our hands and say we weren't troubled and troublesome teenagers? Not me, certainly. How many of those of us who have been parents can say we haven't made mistakes? Not I, mate. It's no coincidence that many of my radio plays and much of my prose are about the repercussions that adult behaviour can have on children's lives.
'I had to write about it,' Myerson told Paxman, and Paxman reacted with his trademark mix of regular-bloke disbelief and supercilious contempt, and the rest of the world threw up their hands in horror with accusations of selfishness (and Myerson retreated into her now familiar justification that she had to tell the world about skunk).
But the point is this: we writers have a constitutional urge to write about what moves and troubles us and seems to us of dire importance (and I'm betting that this is something Jake Myerson understood when he apparently assented to the book's publication, which makes it all a much greyer area than people seem to assume): without that urge, books would be dead things that moved no one and affected nothing.
But this is the problem: the people we are in the throes of such crises are not the people we will always be. We are not the incontrovertible 'fact' of ourselves. It seems to me that Myerson's biggest mistake was to write the book as fact and not as fiction. You can see why she did, if she felt an urgency to expose the problem of skunk, and given the supremacy of 'fact' over fiction in our culture. But it's hard not to see the tragedy for this family as the ultimate fallout from this pernicious contemporary cultural phenomenon.
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9 comments:
I entirely agree. You're so right. It would have been brilliant if she'd just written it as fiction, as writers indeed do all the time with what we see as the truth.
Either way, I hope things work out for the family.
Axxx
I hope that, too, Anne.
"we writers have a constitutional urge to write about what moves and troubles us and seems to us of dire importance"
Yes, but not necessarily the same urge to publish it. I agree she should have fictionalised it, partly out of consideration for the son (and I'm not sure how far I believe the tale of his having consented) but partly also because it'd probably have made a better book. I am sick of this silly notion that the more "real" a story is, the better. Human imagination is there to improve on life. Reality TV has all but killed original TV drama and greatly diminished the medium; I don't want books to go the same way. If I wanted to be "entertained" by real people going about their often banal business, I would drill a hole in my neighbours' wall.
Yes, that's my contention: that fiction makes better books of such things because the truth it deals with is emotional rather than 'factual'. And yes, the other great things about fiction is that, while in pursuit of that greater truth, it protects people from a writer's inevitably biased view of the 'facts.'
I feel incredibly sorry for all members of the Myerson family. The scariest thing about this whole business is that many commentators seem happy to pass judgement, willingly giving in to the urge (a basic human urge we all experience now and again)to make others ‘bad’ and ‘wrong’ in order to prove that we are ‘good’ and right’ by contrast - surely any reasonably self-aware person would see that all this condemnation of various members of the Myerson family, tempting and diverting as it might be, is simply a way of boosting one’s own ego and asserting one’s (illusory) moral superiority? I have no personal knowledge of the family, but from what I’ve read, the parents seem to love the son deeply, and he probably loves them too, however critical he is of them. Everyone feels pain, and when in pain, anyone is capable of causing pain to others. Hopefully the fact that this private trouble has broken into the public sphere will now create an opportunity for parents and son to have a substantial heart-to-heart and try to understand and forgive each other and move on. Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight asked Julie Myerson how she thought publishing the book would enhance her son’s life chances. He asked it sarcastically, but let’s put that question seriously for a second. Jake Myerson’s life chances needn’t be hampered at all if people don’t judge him - he’s a person doing his best in the world, as is his mother. We might or might not agree with their decisions, but we are not in their shoes and don’t know what it feels like to be them. And, let’s face it, neither of them is a torturer or mass-murderer. They are simply people expressing their feelings and talking about their experiences, and that’s only a scary/risky/taboo thing to do in a harsh, unforgiving, uncomprehending world. As for the fact versus fiction thing, I can understand why she wanted to write it as a straightforward memoir - sometimes you just want to express yourself directly, about something that matters to you so much. I'm sure no member of the Myerson family has ever done any of the particular regrettable things I've done in my life - we all make different mistakes and cause different kinds of pain. That sounds obvious, but it's a convenient accident, but one that allows us to say, 'Oh,that (the thing I've never done because I've never been in that particular situation) - that's a terrible thing to do.'
PS And the point about whether or not the parties can be believed: that's the trouble with non-fiction, whatever you present as the factual truth can always be challenged as lies. Whereas, fiction, which deals in a different kind of truth (emotional truth, can, if it deals with it well, automatically convince on every level.
Anon: Beautifully and movingly expressed, and echoing so many my own feelings.
I think that the son, Jake did not give permission, he simply said that he knew he couldn't stop her from doing it.
Skunk? I find it hard to believe any sort of "demon weed" hysteria.
Anon: you prove my point that anything published as 'fact'can be challenged on that level, ie as 'fact'.
As for your term 'hysteria': I find it hard to accept such a judgment of the book. Unless, of course, you have read it...
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