13 of October, 2016
Case #1: The Mystery of Ondaatje
Welcome back! It is officially sweater weather. Fall is the best season to sit back, relax, and read something—whether it be a novel, newspaper, or in the case of our Global Citizens ASTU class at UBC–a memoir. Grab a cup of coffee and get cozy; for this week’s blog entry I wanted to focus on trying to answer a couple questions that have been on my mind ever since my class has started to read Running In the Family by Michael Ondaatje.
Do memoirs have to be true? Why would Ondaatje write a memoir about events that may or may not have happened in history?
Using Running in the Family as the prime example, author Michael Ondaatje, clearly writes a disclaimer in the acknowledgements section of his book about the truthfulness of his book. Since rumours and family gossip are not exactly considered credible sources, he admits that imagination has had a part in the construction of his memoir. Everyone is capable of imagining, so what constitutes Running In the Family as a memoir worth reading? Though both the eloquence within Ondaatje’s writing and the poetic detail used to describe memories make Running in the Family a fulfilling read, I had to stop and wonder why I was reading a memoir filled with events that may or may not have happened. To answer my question, Linda Hutcheon, a literary theorist, has classified Running in the Family as not exactly a memoir, but rather more of a “historiographic metafiction”, which works to “situate itself within historical discourse without surrendering its autonomy as fiction”. In other words, since Ondaatje followed a historical guideline of time and place, it left him free range to structure and build his memories around that. But then my mind went elsewhere, as I thought about how Ondaatje might bend his story in the slightest, which would ultimately have a huge impact on the truth of his story. It would definitely play in Ondaatje’s favour to alter rumours and memories, maybe for entertainment purposes, or maybe for privacy reasons. Since Ondaatje had only interviewed the living members of his family, all the memories that had died with his ancestors will be passed down by second-hand witnesses. How often can you trust second-hand witnesses? Of course, it is not always possible to speak with the first-hand witness, the one who has lived through certain memories and events. I would like to refer back to my first blog entry; even though I focused more on Persepolis, the concept of history being rewritten through generations also applies to Running in the Family. People generally do not remember the minuscule memories of other people, such as their daily routine or emotions, making it highly likely that Ondaatje’s family members would tell him the essential events that they do remember, leaving out all the unnecessary bland details. What makes Running In the Family thrilling are all those jaw-dropping moments; for example, all of Mervyn’s audacious escapades and Francis de Saram’s drunken antics. For some reason, I can just imagine Ondaatje while writing Running in the Family, thinking to himself “maybe a little truth here, a little white lie there”. He may have telling the truth at some times, and other times fabricating the truth in order to entertain us—making Running In the Family all the more mysterious…I suppose as readers we will never truly know.