Telling the truth in memoir?

I have a chapter about my best friend in my memoir in which I name him.

His first wife shot herself at 19 and a month later their landlord blew the top of his own head off.

It was not openly spoken of but suspected in the village we lived in that they had been having an affair.

I also wrote that I believe that his stepfather beat him as a kid and also that his stepfather deliberately caused an industrial accident that severely injured my own father on the job site. My dad told me this, it is not speculation. There are people alive still from these families.

Dare I write this?

 

Talk to a lawyer. I don't think anyone can answer that here. I'm sure some are qualified if you hired them, but it sounds like you are asking for legal advice on a writing forum.

 

Well, a publisher is waiting to read the manuscript. I'm sure he'll tell me whether such detail is acceptable, but I was wondering if anyone here had real world experience with this kind of thing.

 

Seems like the Golden Rule would apply here. Would you want those sorts of details of your life made public?

 

Well, my friend and most of his relatives are all dead now, but there are relatives of others mentioned still alive.

 

Candidly, I fail to see how the fact that the friend and some relatives are no longer living in any way affects the advice you have already been given. There are relatives still alive. Do you care about their feelings? If not -- go ahead. If so -- edit the suicides out of the book.

It's your memoir, right? The story of your life? Even if he was your best friend ever, did the suicide of his wife and his landlord have any earth-shattering, life-altering effect on you or your life's path? If so, perhaps the incidents should be mentioned. If not -- why are they in the book?

As to the part involving your father -- that affected you, so it has a place. Just remember that you only know what your father told you, which makes it hearsay. Be sure that you report it accurately so you can defend yourself if you are sued for libel.

 

It was suspected they were having an affair. You believe his stepfather beat him. Your father claims that the stepfather caused an industrial accident.

If the industrial accident led to a scenario in which the stepfather was indicted and convicted in open court for causing the incident and accompanying injuries, you might have an item for the book, but otherwise you will be promulgating gossip, and malicious gossip at that. Dare you write it for other people to read, including the family of your friend? Not if you have a shred of decency or journalistic integrity in your psychological makeup.

 

Absolutely reinforce what @Catriona Grace said. The dead have no right of reply, so more care should be taken than for the living, who can at least sue.
Second point, on the industrial "accident". If there's no formal, recognized attribution of blame, the real question is how deep are your pockets?

 

I wouldn't publish any of this stuff in a book because really you don't know if any of it is true.

 

If it's a memoir I don't think it's important if any of it is 'true'. A memoir isn't a mathematics text or a science primer, it's memories of a person's life, and there are things held in memory that may or may not be factually true in the absolute sense (if there is any such thing), but on which a person's life hinges powerfully. Ask certain native Americans why the sun comes up every day and they won't mention anything about the rotation of the earth, but about their sun ceremonies.

How does the Jefferson Starship song go? Here:

It's like a tear in the hands of a western man
Tell you about salt, carbon and water
But a tear to a Chinese man
Will tell you about sadness and sorrow or the love of a man and a woman.​

From Ride the Tiger. There are deep human truths that have nothing whatsoever to do with scientific fact or reason, and that are far more powerful in a person's life.

And, as was mentioned above, I think it's important to not state things so they sound like facts. Use phrases like "People said it was because..." or "As far as we were concerned..."

 

Cool. I always wanted to write my memoir and include the time I climbed Mt. Whitney. I just won't mention I only hiked a few thousand feet in elevation and never made it any where near the top, because it was a fine experience that would only be tarnished by the truth, and what is truth, anyway, but someone's perception of reality?

 

I direct your attention to the difference between 'memoir', 'lies', and 'delusions'. It's funny how once you move the focus a little ways away from rigid scientific/materialist fact, some people want to go all the way to the opposite end and see no distinctions along the way. I know you're only kidding, but that's a pretty good depiction of how a lot of people seem to actually think. Their 'reasoning' seems to go "Hey, it's difficult for us to ascertain absolute fact, so there must be no such thing as truth! Any delusion I want to claim is now completely true if i say it is!!"

 

Of course this could be very different kind of story, one with a totally unreliable narrator. That would work too, as long as it become clear they're unreliable.

 

Many years ago, my then-wife and a friend took a trip to India to visit the ashram of some then-popular guru or other. When she returned and was talking about the trip, she said something about how difficult it was to get reliable information about anything in India. I said, "So basically they're all liars?"

To which she replied, "Oh, no. They're not liars. They just have a different understanding of what truth is."

Yes, that's pretty much an exact quote. She had clearly drunk the Kool-Aid -- but I knew that before she even decided to take the trip.

 

You need to be able to understand when people are talking about an inner reality, in which case metaphorical language often works better than materialist factuality. Some gurus, like some psychologists and some poets etc, are much better at this than others, and of course due to the fuzzy nature of the inner reality, it's rife for con men and tricksters just wanting to make a fast buck on drugged-out fools looking for meaning and unable to find any.

The right hemisphere of the brain (aka the unconscious mind) is just as real as the left one, and it thinks very differently. It uses metaphor, myth, religion, and fairy tale. It dreams. Feelings emerge from it. When people ignore it they often become depressed or detached from life, just as when they ignore the logical left hemisphere they become crazy or delusional.

It isn't a case of one being 'better' or more 'real', it's a case of understanding we have both, and we should allow them both some attention.

Of course, in today's almost completely rational/materialist world, many people deeply fear the unconscious, largely because of things Freud said that were just wrong, and unfortunately we aren't taught about Jung's corrections.

But of course there is a huge market for writing that ignores or undervalues or demonizes the unconscious, since so many readers fear it.

 

Yes I know what my father told me, numerous times as I was growing up.

I do not live in the U.S.A., thus we are not anywhere as litigious in this country. Personal lawsuits are rare.

I could tone down and even leave out some of the tougher things about my friend, in sensitivity his memory and those living, but living through the shock and aftermath of of his very young wife's suicide is very much a part of my life. I was 21 and about to marry myself, so it affected me deeply.

 

How the young woman's suicide affected you may be legitimate fuel for memoir. How you were affected by your father's insistence that your friend's stepfather deliberately injured him may be as well. Presenting suspicions as probabilities- well, I already said what I think of that, and it has everything to do with human decency and nothing to do with legal repercussions.

Being sued for libel in the United States is not as common as one might think. Proof of malice isn't required in torts involving private individuals, but to paraphrase what an attorney once told me about suing for slander or libel: the party bringing the lawsuit had better be squeaky clean with no discernable blots in his/her life, because the burden of proof lies with the plaintiff who must demonstrate by a preponderance of evidence that the claim of libel is true. Any little bits of bad behavior one wants to forget might very well be brought up by defense at trial.

Interestingly enough, though American law evolved from English Common Law, in United Kingdom, the burden of proof in libel cases is on the defendant, essentially rendering that person guilty until proved innocent. This presumption makes it more attractive to sue folks for libel in England than in the United States.

Happy 4th of July, y'all.

 

Just because you "think" you know the facts doesn't mean you know the facts.

 

I wrote a memoir that was posted here. It was of an experience I had with a corrupt employer from 2000 to 2003. I have written much on this episode of my life, and always changed the names of the people and the company. I have at times referred to the company as "that 'technical institute' that shall not be named" which gives a big hint to their identity. That has only been after 2016 when they closed their doors for good after losing government funding due to blatant fraud.