For this blog post I would like to use Diamond Grill to extend my discussion of my previous blog post, of using fiction in an autobiography. Fred Wah labels Diamond Grill as a “biotext” (184), which he describes as a way to “dress up” or “embellish” anecdotes of his own life (184). In my previous blog post I discussed fictions incorporation into autobiographical texts as a possible means of negating the authors authenticity. With the use of fiction, readers may not be able to believe, and therefore respect or understand, writers stories, simply because it is not what actually happened. In my previous post, I looked at reviews of Tim O’Brien’s memoir that recounts his experience in the Vietnam war, called The Things They Carried, to find out if readers struggled with the incorporation of fiction into an autobiographical text. Based off of the amazon customer reviews, I found that more people struggled with the violent depictions than with the use of fiction. Even more people enjoyed the realness that O’Brien brought to the novel, that he could only have done through the use of fiction. In this blog post, I would like to focus on the use of fiction in memoirs to understand the “truth” of one’s experiences, not how fiction in a memoir is perceived, as I did in my last post.

O’Brien uses fiction to recount the feeling of being in the Vietnam war, something that cannot be done by simply stating what actually happened. It’s an “I guess you had to be there” moment, when retelling a story doesn’t feel the same as when you are in it. His use of fiction ends up making part of his book very surreal or mystical, which reflects the mystical confusion and fear the real life counterparts of the characters felt.

Looking at Wah’s memoir and the description of biotext in the Afterword, allows us to look at the use of fiction, not as just a description, but as a way of reconciliation. Wah states that his text is meant to “explain myself to myself” (185), meaning that he uses his text as a way to make sense of his own life. The use of fiction in “dressing up” his own life then, could be a way for him to reconcile with it. Maybe recounting the full “truth” of the story will not allow him to understand it. Embellishing it with fiction may allow him to see his life in a different way that allows for reconciliation. The same could be said about Tim O’Brien’s text. His use of fiction is possibly a way for him to understand his experiences as well as a way for everyone else to understand what being in the Vietnam war was truly like.

So not only is fiction a way to tell readers the “true” feeling about what an experience was like, but it is also a way for writers to make sense of their own experiences. Fiction allows writers to make sense of something that can’t be done by retelling what actually happened. In turn, readers will end up with a piece of literature with more “truth” and meaning than a repetition of exactly what happened.

Works Cited:

Wah, Fred. Diamond Grill: 10th Anniversary. Edmonton: NeWest, 2008. Print.