“on one’s honor”: an expression used to emphasize the truth of something which is said -Cambridge Dictionary
There’s a scene in a movie I love in which the protagonist accuses his acquaintance Geoffrey Chaucer of lying. “Yes, yes, I lied,” Chaucer says, “I’m a writer, I give the truth scope!”
Well, I too am a writer—at least an aspiring one—and though I don’t share the gray ethics of this imagined version of Chaucer, I do believe that writing gives the truth scope, as in “the opportunity to do or deal with something” (Oxford Languages).
And, in fact, I believe that doing so does not equate to lying at all, particularly when you look at nonfiction, which is a word often used synonymously with “truth” (truth being those tangible and intangible realities that make up our world and existence); and, even more particularly, when you look at the essay, which is a word meaning “to try, attempt, or undertake”— thus the nonfiction essay tries truth, attempts truth, undertakes truth. It does not lie for the sake of wonder or to gain power over a reader’s opinion. Rather, it articulates truths so that readers might read them and think oh, I see now, or that’s it, what I’ve been trying to say all along. It is a chance for truth to be condensed into digestible fragments, delivered for consumption, and then used to nourish.
I think we’re programmed for truth. I think we crave it because we’re made of it: real cells knitted together, functioning in immutable ways, moving through a space dictated by natural laws, crafted in the image of the God who lives and breathes and maintains truth. And when a variable society and soul throws us for a loop, truth lets us feel some semblance of control over what otherwise feels chaotic, or some understanding over what otherwise feels unknown.
The personal essay is a tool for discovering truth. It may not be the kind of capital T truth we expect from science, but it is truth, nonetheless. It is a truth that comes from examining subjective experience in search of objective truth about humanity. And just like scientists who rely on specific objective methods to discover truth, the personal essayist employs several subjective methods to uncover truths hidden in the experiences of our everyday lives:
First, adhering to the ‘facts’ of an event or memory, to the best of the writer’s ability, while acknowledging the limitations of perception and memory. Second, meditation on the implications of known facts. Third, “perhapsing” when we don’t know the objective truth. And fourth, finding new ways of seeing “facts” by using extended metaphors, comparisons, and even unexpected forms or structures.
I’ve found that when truths in life are examined and explored in these essayistic ways, we discover profound truths of the soul that would otherwise remain hidden. And when combined with charm of character and creativity of craft, the best essays are especially resonant, rich, and inspiring. These are skills I sought to identify in various essays and implement in my own.
Adherence to Facts Within Memory (and Acknowledgment of Memory’s Fallibility)
If, when writing about personal experience, essayists were constantly fretting over making their essay “apodictic” (or “clearly established or beyond dispute” as Oxford English Dictionary defines), if they always worried over the precision of their memory, writing essays would be like walking on eggshells, constantly addressing tangents and contexts that would only complicate their message and detract from its influence (Klaus 38). And nothing would ever be written, (or nothing would ever get read).
Essays should make confident claims. It is their confidence that gives them strength. They should also, however, provide some sort of acknowledgment that memory is fleeting, and flawed.
The first thing Nora Ephron writes in her collection I Remember Nothing is a disclaimer: that “I have been forgetting things for years—at least since I was in my thirties. I know this because I wrote something about it at the time. … Of course, I can’t remember exactly where I wrote about it, or when, but I could probably hunt it up if I had to” (1). Something Ephron excels at is her humility, her ability to admit “I HAVE NO IDEA” (19). And that is the first key to claiming truth in an essay—report what you can with the accuracy you are capable of, and admit your limitations where you are incapable of accuracy. A humble admission of imperfection can instill a level of trust that can’t be accessed otherwise… acknowledging that truth is difficult to grasp is an act of humility that gives authority to the writer, a level of trustworthiness that readers can relate to and rest on.
Jose Ortega y Gasset grants essayists some slack when he says that essays are not a science, “they are simply essays,” which is science “minus the explicit proof” of anything (Klaus 38). But this also points to writers’ responsibilities. A writer implements practices similar to the scientist—they theorize, analyze, and draw conclusions, though they do so broadly, on abstract subjects unable to be pinned under a microscope. Still, like scientists they must then uphold the obligation to adhere to the most accurate portrayals of their subjective observations, including in their memories, if they are to suggest truth with any authority. Ortega further comments on the roles within the relationship of writer and reader, that “although for the author the doctrines are scientific convictions, he does not expect the reader to accept them as truths” (Klaus 39). Under this ideology, the writer may claim truth without imposing it on the reader. They ask for collaboration, not conformation.
For such a collaboration to be most effective the writer should, like Nora Ephron, acknowledge their fallibility. Confession like this is not usually as blatant as Ephron makes it, but it may still be found in subtle nods (via tone or text) to holes in memory, or language that admits unknowing. For example, Leslie Jamison’s Empathy Exams is centered on the concept of how we might achieve empathy when our minds are incapable of total synchronization with another, which in itself concedes the reality of imperfect brains and understanding. What Jamison says of empathy could be said of the humility with which we should wield our memories: “Empathy requires knowing you know nothing,” she says, “Empathy means acknowledging a horizon of context that extends perpetually beyond what you can see.” For this reason, I (as a reader) trust Jamison (as a writer) more implicitly, knowing that she is self-aware and therefore carefully responsible with her words, as she is careful with portraying memories beyond her vision.
If there is one thing I am confident of, it is the amount of things I do not know or remember. This makes me extremely self-aware, bordering on the eggshell-caution of self-consciousness, as I attempt to narrate the experiences I’ve gleaned truth from. I check myself constantly, evaluating the things I’ve written by looking in journals, emails, and old daily planners in hopes that my memories will be triggered by and grounded in the things I have recorded. When those do not provide full-picture clarity, I admit my lack thereof. This admission was especially present in “On Fire” and “Onomatopoeia”, where the memories were fully my own and dealt with sensitive subjects which impacted other people even more forcefully than they did me. Out of respect for those people and for readers, I want to deliver these narratives with as much reality as I can manage.
For example, I acknowledge “haziness” of memory in “On Fire”, providing only brief and fairly scattered details to create the scene:
“The week that followed is hazy in my memory. I remember those first two days so vividly, but after that I mostly get just flashes of gray—gray clouds melting into gray earth on either side of the gray Highway 101. Bare, gray shelves lining the aisles at FoodMaxx. Gray news speaking bleakly of families whose lives were now gray too, having lost family members and homes and other things precious to them.”
By highlighting my lack of surety I hope to first, reflect of the instability we feel in the face of shocking circumstances, and (more importantly,) second, allow readers to fill in gaps according to their own experience, encouraging an understanding of truth on an individual, personal level.
Meditation on Known Facts
Established facts are powerful resources for helping writers uncover truths as they write an essay. But on the topic of fact, Katharine Gerould points out that they in themselves are not “truth”—the truth comes after a meditation on facts (Klaus 62). She states that the creative nonfiction essay sits in the overlap between creative and critical, its method of creation being meditation.
The essay, then, having persuasion for its object, states a proposition; its method is meditation; it is subjective rather than objective, critical rather than creative. It can never be a mere marshalling of facts; for it struggles, in one way or another, for truth; and truth is something one arrives at by the help of facts, not the facts themselves. Meditating on facts may bring one to truth; facts alone will not. (Klaus 63)
The essay is indeed persuaded to achieve some end, and therefore states (directly or subliminally) a proposition. It’s then the author’s commentary, train of thought, elaboration and expansion on facts that develops truth around that proposition; fact upon fact, line upon line.
As writers expound on the what, why, where, how and when of the factual elements they employ, truth materializes. This is what I appreciate about research-heavy essays, or essays with any kind of exploration of a physical or historical entity. Brian Doyle’s Leaping, Elena Passarello’s Animals Strike Curious Poses, John Green’s The Anthropocene Review, each lean on thorough research of certain objects or moments, work through that “what, why, how, when, where,” and thereby illustrate their respective propositions. In one of Green’s essays he recounts “Jerzy Dudek’s performance on May 25, 2005,” wherein under exorbitant stress, Dudek (FC Liverpool’s goalie) executed a jaw-dropping save from a penalty kick in the Championships League final match. Green recounts this historical moment in beautiful detail, incorporating quotes from Dudek himself as well as friends and family present for the match. He references footage, provides statistics, each of which root the story in truth. And all throughout he meditates on his own connections to the what’s, how’s, why’s, where’s… and comes to the end that “I often feel like I’m Jerzy Dudek … feeling as hopeless as I do helpless.” But, “seeing Jerzy Dudek sprint away from that final penalty save to be mobbed by his teammates reminds me that someday—and maybe someday soon—I will also be embraced by people I love” (106). While the facts of this event do not in themselves have much deep meaning, Green’s work of examining and reflecting on those facts creates a space in which he finds truth about the value of being surrounded by the people we love. Meditation is the channel through which fact is added upon, and mingled with belief, then becoming truth—including truths that instill hope, or confidence, or solidarity, as they did for John Green.
I find a lot of power in the truth that comes from fact. Fact is grounding, reliable, steadying. It lets me trust what I read and what I write. I try to take advantage of that steadying power by incorporating research into my own essaying—I’ve learned about how wildfires burn, what race-walking entails, the statistics on juice sales in America, none of which would normally have any significance to me were I not to meditate on how I can connect with each of them. Every story and description has been enriching, revealing truth as only meditation can allow.
“Perhapsing” When Objective Truth is Lacking: The Value of Speculation
Even when a writer has committed to an effort for truth, and has utilized research to provide factual details, there will still be moments (frequently, even,) where the objective truth we have access to is lacking. That is, when even the things that are grounded cannot fully provide the insight the writer wants to draw upon.
When this is the case, Lisa Knopp recommends “perhapsing”: choosing to speculate on the objective facts available, introducing that speculation with signal words such as “perhaps.” “The word ‘perhaps’ cues the reader that the information [imparted] is not factual speculative,” she says. By perhapsing we might suggest motives, complexities, justifications, validations, and general contextual details that help us pull truth out of closed concepts and experiences. This allows the writer to develop an idea by drifting into an imagined depiction of events, while maintaining the goals of nonfiction.
Brian Doyle masters perhapsing; his essays are sometimes entirely perhapse’d—hypothetical conversations, imagined things, still rooted in reality because Doyle has made it clear the words are his thoughts alone. “The Way We Do Not Say What We Mean When We Say What We Say” in One Long River of Song concludes, “Perhaps languages use us in ways that we are not especially aware of; perhaps languages are aware that they need us to speak them… Perhaps languages invent themselves and then have to hunt for speakers. Perhaps …” and so on (100). Doyle’s “objects” of interest are often abstracts like this, like language, which cannot (ironically in this case) speak for themselves. And yet his perhapsing allows readers to fill in gaps, suppose things that provide the meaning-making we need, to identify truth.
Of all the techniques for uncovering truth, I think this one is unavoidable. I could identify moments in every essay I’ve written, I’d bet, that relies on supposition to highlight the points I’m aiming for. A couple essays in this thesis are particularly dense with perhapses, as I picture individuals “On a Walk” and wonder what they think as they do so—(such as supposing that “Toddlers… [are] innocently confident in their own ability to toddle again and again and again. To them it just makes sense. My steps got me across the room once before, they must be able to do so again.”)—or point out the words that stay “On Our Minds” and ruminate on why those words (“We hope that we are those things. We want those statements to be true. Because if they are, that means we are doing at least one thing right.”)— Perhapsing allowed me to ponder and glean inspiring truths about the faith and determination people are capable of, and the hope for good that guides our decisions.
This concerted imagination is part of writing that exemplifies Jamison’s definition of empathy, “acknowledging a horizon of context that extends perpetually beyond what you can see”—we navigate that context blindly, but sincerely, and hopefully do justice to the objective truth as we articulate it with subjective brains. When successful, we then have access to statements of truth that make us feel like we can understand and be understood, truth that proves we are not alone.
Finding New Ways of Seeing Facts
Maybe my favorite thing about the personal essay is the confusion with which people may look at piece like “Solving My Way to Grandma” by Laurie Easter, which is crafted entirely as a crossword puzzle, and say “how is that an essay?” My joy is not in others’ confusion, but in the intrigue that follows as people realize the power and meaning that form and metaphor can provide when trying to illustrate (quite literally, sometimes,) an idea. It’s exhilarating, that moment of realization.
When the truth of something is hard to decipher, unusual patterns in the world can become means of revelation as connections are made. As Emily Dickinson says, “tell all the truth but tell it slant.” Essays embrace this challenge and opportunity wholly; extended metaphors, comparisons, and experimentation with form can each “perhaps”, but through analogy rather than conjecture. (We call these experimentations with form “hermit crab essays”, as words adopt a different “shell” than is the standard, offering observations and reflections and juxtapositions that deepen the meaning-making of the essay and its subject.) Through these comparisons the reader is invited to draw conclusions of truth based on their prior knowledge or experience with more familiar, relatable concepts or objects. We see truth on the other side of a new lens.
I am excited by my encounters with essays like this, which embed perhapsing into their form. Doyle writes an entire essay as a list of individuals he prays for, pulling in the seriousness and emotion of genuine care through a written supplication to deity. The Anthropocene Reviewed uses the form of the 5-star review to frame each essay, the frankness and simplicity of that genre speaking to society’s inclination to calibrate thought. Green balances or counters that inclination with his own personal experiences and subsequent explanations for his reviews, reminding the reader that at the end of the day, each person will have a different (and valid) experience with the elements of the world he highlights and can therein find similar revelations. “OK, Cupid” by Sarah McColl is a dating profile, profiling her own grievances over a life she’s dissatisfied with, via a form that many people associate with feelings of disappointment.
I attempt experimentation with form in “On the Up and Up”, defining scripture within my own context and understanding, braiding quotes and dictionary-like definitions with my own commentary on the meaning of those verses. The word “certain” in the phrase “a certain woman” does not just denote a character, it “suggests individuality.” It means to be “known for sure,” in this case “by God.” Suffering means more than just hurt, it can be defined as the turmoil of culminating “affliction, temptation, sickness, infirmities,” and even “sin,” and the exhaustion of having “tried everything to overcome” such turmoil independently, to no avail. Familiarity with dictionary definitions and their structural language can be a tool to point readers to particular meanings I want to make clear.
My hope with this and any other essay I write with form or metaphor so prominently prioritized is that the unexpectedness of such form might capture attention, while the familiarity of it may draw out further meaning. This is what Brenda Miller suggests as well, that “when you set about to write creative nonfiction about any subject, you bring to this endeavor a strong voice and singular vision. This voice must be loud and interesting enough to be heard among the noise coming at us in everyday life” (ix). A deviation from standard writing is one way to maybe be loud and certainly be interesting, enough to be heard or seen among the noise of other writing in the world. Emphasized creativity concurrently emphasizes the message, helping both writer and reader see truths in a new way.
This Is an Honest Essay
Marya Hornbacher says that “Nonfiction implicitly argues that truth matters, that true stories matter, and that the individual author’s perception of what is true carries some kind of weight; that the story she tells can and should be heard, its reverberations felt, beyond the echo chamber of her mind.”
As a body that craves truth and the security I feel in it, I’m passionate about what the nonfiction essay does—this genre that tries, like I do, to capture truth. I’m encouraged, too, by the thought that my true stories matter. The truths that I am sure of, I want others to feel as well. Articulating these is a battle, especially when the only inherent tools or talents I’m capable of exist in subjectivity, but I am essaying consistently to do what Doyle does, what Green, Jamison, Passarello, Foster Wallace, Didion, Sedaris, Biss, and more have demonstrated so beautifully in their own portrayal of truth. They have given it scope, and done so honestly. These are stories, thoughts, insights, opinions, exhortations, that can and should be heard. Better yet, they should be felt, from the eyes that take them in to the brain that computes them to the soul that is nourished by them.
Essay pioneer Michel de Montaigne begins “To the Reader” with the bold declaration “Reader, thou hast here an honest book.” I love this. I love that it declares truth so proudly—though “truth” is perhaps not the best word; “honesty” is what it promises. And after all is said, that’s what I find the core of nonfiction to be… not the perfection that Truth denotes, but the honesty and sincerity of truth’s portrayal, analysis, and conclusion. Not every word will be objectively flawless, but everything should be subjectively true.
In each of my essays as I wax on and on and on about truths that I’ve accumulated in my life, I can promise that each is an honest essay. The truth is important to me—and though I deliver truths with all the imperfections a subjective body and brain must, know that, on my honor, I strive for the kind of grounded truth that will, as Ortega puts it, “awaken in kindred minds kindred thoughts,” so that both of us might be enlightened.
References
- de Montaigne, Michel. “To the Reader.” Quotidiana, http://essays.quotidiana.org/montaigne/to_the_reader/.
- Doyle, Brian. Leaping: Revelations & Epiphanies. Loyola Press, 2013.
- Doyle, Brian. One Long River of Song: Notes on Wonder. Back Bay Books, 2020.
- Ephron, Nora. I Remember Nothing. Black Swan, 2011.
- Greaney, Aine. “How to Write Safe Truths in Our Personal Essays and Memoirs.” Aine Greaney. 25 February 2021. http://www.ainegreaney.com/insider-tips-for-writers/2021/2/25/who-wants-a-piece-of-you-and-your-story
- Green, John. The Anthropocene Reviewed. Random House UK, 2023.
- Hornbacher, Marya. “The World Is Not Vague: Nonfiction and the Urgency of Fact.” ASSAY, https://www.assayjournal.com/marya-hornbacher-the-world-is-not-vague-nonfiction-and-the-urgency-of-fact-51.html.
- Jamison, Leslie. The Empathy Exams. Audible Studios on Brilliance, 2015.
- Klaus, Carl H., and Ned Stuckey-French. Essayists on the Essay: Montaigne to Our Time. University of Iowa Press, 2012.
- Lazar, David. Truth in Nonfiction: Essays. University of Iowa Press, 2008.
- Passarello, Elena. Animals Strike Curious Poses. Sarabande Books, 2017.
- Popova, Maria. “From Mark Twain to Ray Bradbury, Iconic Writers on Truth vs. Fiction.” The Marginalian, 18 Sept. 2015, https://www.themarginalian.org/2012/01/27/famous-authors-on-truth-vs-fiction/.
