Make It Up & Tell The Truth

The facts are always less than what really happened.
– Nadine Gordimer

In honor of Gordimer and Gabo

You should never make things up with the intent to deceive, but you could/should make it up to reveal the truth. Two writers we will never forget Nadine Gordimer 1923 – 2014 and Gabriel Garcia Marquez 1927 – 2014 died this year. Both recipients of the Nobel Prize for Literature (Gordimer 1991 – Marquez 1982) they showed us truth in many incarnations. The truth of why we write, of what we write, and how we write it. A grateful recipient of epiphany, Gordimer’s courage and insight showed me the essence of truth. Marquez’s imagination and fingerprints taught me about choice. Through the fictional worlds they create we can more closely align ourselves with reality. 

If you want to know what really happened to people in the Napoleonic Wars and Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow, you can read the facts in the history books. But to know how it was to live then, we have to read War and Peace.
– Nadine Gordimer

The daughter of poor South African whites, Gordimer attended a convent school. Early on she witnessed and understood “there was no mercy for blacks.” Attempting to comprehend this moral conflict propelled her work that spanned 60 years. While she claimed she was not a political creature by nature, her work shines a spotlight on the racial inequality institutionalized by the Apartheid regime and the resulting cruelty inflicted. A writer of novels, short stories and essays, (over 40 books) her work includes: July’s People, Burgher’s Daughter, A Sport of Nature, The Conservationist, (Booker Prize Winner), and My Son’s Story.

What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.
– Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Influenced by his storytelling grandparents, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Gabo) imagines, invents, and fantasizes. His family legacy does not inhibit – it inhabits his mind. He writes his fingerprints. He makes it up to expose the truth.

Marquez grew up in poverty in Colombia. His outspoken grandfather, a Colonel, once killed a man in a duel. Many of Gabo’s characters echo what his grandfather told him – there is no greater burden than to kill a man. Gabo’s superstitious grandmother filled his head with ghost stories, premonitions, and omens she delivered in a serious manner no matter how fantastical the tale. Her method of storytelling provided the foundation for his literary style. A political activist, Marquez uses magic realism to explore ordinary and realistic situations – and the theme of solitude.

Novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, and journalist, Marquez achieved international recognition at age 39 for his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude published in1967. In the first week after publication it sold 8000 copies and went on to sell half a million copies within 3 years, and won 4 international prizes. It is now one of the classics of 20th century literature. His other internationally acclaimed novels include Autumn of the Patriarch and Love in the Time of Cholera.

Like Gordimer, I believe we create art to make sense of life. We write, draw, paint, photograph, or perform to answer questions. I also believe, as exemplified in the work of Marquez, that all creative endeavors bear the unique fingerprints of the artist. You can’t and shouldn’t try to change them.

Look at any great body of work, and you will see the same themes from the artist played out over and over again, from different angles, in alternate manifestations. Look at Gordimer and Gabo. Searching for the truth. Making it up to unveil it. Honor and learn from other artists and writers. But mine your own experiences, obsessions and demons. Celebrate their singularity. Define and deepen your fingerprints. Imagine, reinvent, blend, or blur. Then cut – and polish.

And…here’s the real truth.

Most writers have very little choice in what they write about.
– Betsy Lerner