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4B - Thursday, March 6, 2008
BOOKS NOTEBOOK
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Books
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The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
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us
ies
A good story is good whether it's true or not.
Activism, with
paint, song
and scratching
By KATIE CAREY are photo-based, but music helps.
DailyArts Writer Music influences the energy of the
moment; it stimulates the mind
If you have higher expectations and often triggers creativity."
for graffiti art than the "FRESH" In just three hours, Pendon will
epidemic, you base his work on inspiring activist
might want to and singer Radmilla Cody, a Nava-
visit the Michi- inne jo activist who works on issues of
gan Union Pendon domestic violence, environmental-
tonight for a live ism and problems unique to Native
performance Tonight at Americans. Cody, who struggled
by graffiti art- 6p.m. to find her identity as a biracial
ist Gene Pen- Aihe Michigan woman in the homogenous Navajo
don. When the community, has created music that
rash of amateur Free serves as a beacon through which
scribbles around others can find strength.
Ann Arbor just doesn't cut it, look
to an artist who has established his
roots in New York-style graffiti.
"Art-I-FAKTS: (her) story 2" is She's singing and
part of a Fighting Obstacles Know-
ing Ultimate Success (F.O.K.U.S.), he's paintingbut
Black Arts Council and National the art is in the
Council of Negro Women event,
where Pendon will create a live e n
painting in the Union's Art Lounge
to mark Women's History Month.
Accompanied by the sounds of
DJ Teddy Ruck-Spin (Disclosure:
Ruck-Spin's alter ego, Ted Cul- Pendon's live art collective
linane, sometimes writes for the Heavyweight Production House
Daily's arts section), Pendon's specializes in just that: bringing
work will lend itself to what he these "heavyweight" cultural icons
considers a crucial aspect of his whether they're writers, painters,
creations: music. musicians, or activists to life.
Pendon's live painting began "It is an opportunity to feature
as a way to pay the rent. Each someone and introduce their
month, a community of artists story," Pendon said. "I think the
in Montreal would throw a live idea behind Women's History
painting night, where musicians Month is to draw awareness to
performed and painters trans- issues and figures and create
formed blank canvases into art. activism that will engage peo-
Pieces were auctioned off at the ple."
end of each night. This not only He's created installations along-
earned Pendon the extra cash he side artists such as Afrika Bam-
needed, but also gave him his first baataa, Pete Rock and Masters at
look into the world of public art Work.
performance. Becomingquitetheheavyweight
"When we are doing live instal- himself, Pendon offers cultural
lations, the music is part of the insight in the form of hyper-pop,
room, and the art that is being cre- graffiti-based groove art murals
ated is what is being experienced," that bring meaningful messages
Pendon said. "It's not like a pan- to his audience and a style that is
tomime to the music; the figures truly "fresh."
By MARK SCHULTZ
Daily Arts Writer
According to The New York Times, Marga-
ret B. Jones, author of "Love and Consequenc-
es," a memoir about her life running drugs for
the Bloods in South Central Los Angeles, has
admitted to fabricating her entire story. Misha
Defonseca, who published "Misha: A Memoire
of the Holocaust Years" in 1997, also recently
admitted to Slate.com that "Misha" is "not
actual reality." These scandals broke just a cou-
ple years after James Frey admitted to making
up certain details of his 2003 memoir, "A Mil-
lion Little Pieces," an incident which begat an
average "South Park" episode.
There are two basic sides to any argument
about this kind of authorial deception. One
would say the authors are fakes and deserve to
have their books pulled from the shelves, their
royalties seized by the I.R.S. and the need for
carnivorous earwigs to be inserted into their
brains. Another side would say: big deal. It's a
story. It's still entertaining, so take it for what
it is.
I'll take a third side. This fabrication is
emblematic of a larger problem in literature
today. With fewer and fewer kids reading, pub-
lishinghousesgoingoutofbusiness andthedays
of the iconic novelist as dead as Norman Mailer,
there's little room for the up-and-coming fiction
writer to succeed. But everyone enjoys a good
memoir. People love to read uplifting, inspira-
tional stories. They're the slightlymore literary
equivalent of watching the crack-addicted teen
on "Maury" or "True Life" righthimself and re-
enter society.
Thanks to the emergence of reality shows
on television, people want to see true stories.
Bret Easton Ellis's fictional accounts of sex and
violence in "American Psycho" don't titillate
the American psyche like they used to. Instead,
they need Tucker Max, who is like Patrick Bate--
man without the skull-fucking.
The thing is, these purportedly true mem-
oirs (the ones that haven't been proven false
anyway) can't possibly be any truer, than, well,
"True Life." "True Life," "Made" and other
inspirational reality TV narratives almost cer-
tainly use the same kind of behind-the-camera
manipulation deployed in such farces as "Date
My Mom" and "Next." Any memoir ever writ-
ten will suffer from a different problem: No
one (save Borges's "Funes the Memorious") can
remember every detail of his or her life. Even
Tucker Max, who carries a tape recorder with
him everywhere he goes, admits on his own
website that when he couldn't remember a
detail, he just made it up.
So why exactly are memoirs held up to a
magnifying glass when no one cared that
"Walk the Line" changed or left out a great
number of facts from the two Johnny Cash
autobiographies it was based on? My answer
is not that the public feels betrayed by these
liars, but that they feel betrayed by the mem-
oir itself. These days, a film "based on a true
story" will always gross more than a fictional
one. This is, I imagine, why the Coen Brothers
put that same tagline in "Fargo," even though
that film was as fictional as "Beowulf." But the
problem with memoirs is that the word itself
carries a certain connotation that no film or
TV show can. When someone reads a mem-
oir, they expect a glimpse into reality. When
memoirists take even minor factual liberties,
the audience has lost their trust in - in this
world of heavily-spun news media and manip-
ulated reality shows - what they thought was
one of the last bastions of brutal frankness in
American pop-culture.
In another world, Margaret B. Jones, who
grew up in affluent Sherman Oaks, not East
LA, might be lauded for constructing a story of
inner-city life so convincing that her publish-
ers never questioned its credibility. But instead,
Jones is chastised for being creative, all because
of the precious memoir, which vastly overrates
absolute truth - something that since the age of
Homer has never been essential or even worth-
while ina compelling story.
So when will this trend of glorifying true
narratives as being so much better than fic-
tional ones end? When writers like Jones don't
feel they have to justify an invented story by
pretending it's true. Until then, we'll have frus-
trated novelists tweaking their stories into
truthdom, all while we have to suffer the con-
sequences.
'44
4,s1rcE Ex14cea h
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