On My Dog Tulip
tags:
biography, criticism, dog lit, memoir, nonfiction
As I read J.R. Ackerly’s book My Dog Tulip, there were moments when I found myself wanting to know more about the narrator: Did he have a lover? What did he do for a living? But as the narrative progressed, these details, I realized, were irrelevant. As someone with a tendency either to overindulge in personal details or eliminate them altogether, I was struck by J.R. Ackerley’s success at focusing My Dog Tulip around Tulip in a way that enabled the reader to believe the seemingly neurotic Ackerley could be any dog lover. By avoiding unnecessary personal details about his own character, Ackerley illuminates the complicated and indescribable love between a dog owner and his dog and the lengths to which a dog owner will go to give his pet a life much like he would want for his own offspring.
One of the ways Ackerley does this is by posing series of questions. In doing so, Ackerley demonstrates how good questions do not simply get answered later. By showing the narrator’s thought-process, these questions also invite the reader into the dog owner’s head. For instance, Ackerley asks, “Now that she had improvised a WC for herself, would she not return to it every night? And what could I do to circumvent this? Should I, for instance, strew sheets of brown paper in front of the dressing table where the rug had been?” Though the narrator surely knows the answers, he poses his questions in such a way that the reader finds him- or herself in the head not of the person writing the narrative but of the dog owner at the time that the story was unfolding. This yields tension by creating a rift between what the narrator actually knows and what the narrator has not yet shared. We are left wondering, then, when the narrator and the narrator’s former self will reconcile to discover the answers to these questions. This seems like an obvious technique, but it is not one that I find myself utilizing nearly enough. While reading My Dog Tulip, I found myself returning to the essays on which I was working to insert questions in hopes of creating a similar tension.
Unlike a human’s biographer, the dog’s biographical memoirist does not have the luxury of asking the subject how she felt about something or why she did a particular thing. (Of course, the power dynamics inherent in the interviewer/interviewee relationship hardly guarantee that we get the so-called truth, but they can provide an answer for the writer to analyze or do with as he or she pleases.) Ackerley’s challenge in My Dog Tulip, then, is to speculate about what Tulip felt and why she behaved as she did. Often Ackerley seems to assume an omniscient understanding of his dog. How, I wondered, does he know that Tulip would prefer for others not to know that she was really a “good girl,” as he says she did? Likewise, how did Tulip recall the streets where the two vets’ offices were? Did she really remember the route after one visit, even though she could not have known where they were going when they walked there initially? Did she recognize its scent? And if so, why does Ackerley never speculate about Tulip’s sense of smell? On a more philosophical level, I wondered where the dog owner’s understanding of his dog comes from. Is it inherent in their bond? Or is it possible that Ackerley’s attempts to explain Tulip’s behavior are figments of his imagination, attempts to explain that which cannot be communicated in the English language? Might it be the case that in saying Tulip recalled the streets where the two vets’ offices were, Ackerley was projecting his own worries and fears — he certainly didn’t want to take her back to the vet! — onto Tulip? We can speculate about what our pets want, but those assumptions are always based on human language, a type of communication dogs cannot use. Had Ackerley acknowledged this and speculated about the answers to such questions, My Dog Tulip would have better illuminated the complex and unexplainable nature of the relationship between dog and dog owner.
It would be naïve to say that Ackerley never explores these communication and interpretation troubles, of course. When Tulip relieves herself inside after Ackerley, assuming she wants to play with the cat, refuses to take her out, the narrator acknowledges that he doesn’t always know what Tulip wants. But by suggesting that this was the first time he had misunderstood her, Ackerley draws into question his reliability as a narrator in earlier scenes where he explains her behavior without exploring what led him to believe this is what she was trying to tell him.
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leave a comment Literary Memory
tags:
biography, fact, fiction, memoirs
I just started reading “The Thirteenth Tale,” by Diane Setterfield. I’ve been curious about it ever since my Wordsmiths Project photo shoot and interview with Frank Wilson, the books editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer. Frank had told me that he was enjoying the controversy of having given a good review of a novel that his respected peer, Laurie Muchnick (the books editor of Newsday), definitely didn’t like. Using it as an example of how the Internet now gives readers the opportunity for greater dialog, Frank said, “I’m hoping that Laurie writes a review of The Thirteenth Tale that I liked so much and she didn’t. Because the minute that she does, I’m going to link to it and mine [from his blog, Book, Inq], so that people can have both points of view. Remember the ‘Life of Brian,’ when he tells people ‘You’re all individuals, you can think for yourselves?’ Well, people can, and it’s very good for their minds to think for themselves.”
But what the first few pages of “The Thirteenth Tale” sparked for me was a very different controversy – the current obsession with memoirs that contain inaccurate, often invented accounts. After all, aren’t memoirs, and their literary cousins, biographies, supposed to give us the facts about a life?
“The Thirteenth Tale” centers on an aged best-selling author, Vida Winter, who would invent different histories for herself, whenever she was interviewed. At various times, she was “the secret daughter of a priest and a schoolmistress… the runaway child of a Parisian courtesan… an orphan raised in a Swiss convent, a street child from the backstreets of the East End….” Now, at the end of her life, she summons a biographer, Margaret Lea, and promises to tell her “the truth.” The novel slowly unfolds the story of Vida Winter’s childhood, through her storytelling and Margaret Lea’s investigations.
But what are the facts of a life fully lived, though not documented minute by minute, recording every day’s events and encounters until later – if at all? And what is the truth contained in those half-remembered facts? (I’m not talking about inventions or out-and-out lies. Those belong in a different discussion about why people choose to distort or completely make up their stories rather than try to recount what they remember.)
Vida Winter, in “The Thirteenth Tale,” says, “All children mythologize their birth.” But I would go further than that. I consider my own memory, and I can’t help but reflect that it is a personal mythology of my life – the moments I have chosen to remember because, in hindsight, they have become meaningful to me, to the person I have become since then. Are they accurate memories? Of course not. I’ve filtered them, filled in what I’ve forgotten with what might have been, and embellished them with each retelling.
However, should I choose to write a memoir – something I certainly don’t expect to tackle in this or the next decade – I can’t help but feel that the facts wouldn’t matter so much as what I choose to tell. That’s where the truth of me would be, in the telling. Not necessarily the truth of who I was when whatever event I would be relating occurred, but who I am when I would recount it.
I must admit that I haven’t read the memoirs that stirred the recent controversies. So, I can only speak in general terms. But I know from my own family and friendships, that even when memories are shared, they are seldom the same. Of course, the classic example of this is Akira Kurosawa’s movie “Rashomon,” in which the witnesses of a murder (including the ghost of the victim) all give conflicting versions of the murder.
But what about verifiable facts? I have made my living as a non-fiction writer for two decades. As such I’ve had to check any fact I’ve written, making sure it came from more than one source. If that weren’t possible, and the story still required that I include the information, I would use modifiers such as “he says,” “she claimed,” “the indications are,” etc. I would struggle with all the details, information and facts I could find and try to prove, until I would end up with a story that I felt told the truth of the matter – not my personal truth, but, hopefully, a neutral, unbiased truth.
However, as a photographer, I know that every story and every picture interprets the facts, presenting them in one manner or another. One example I often give is taking the photograph of an island resort hotel. If I angle my camera in one way, I will show you an idyllic, pristine beach with charming bungalows, and a beautiful couple sharing a delicious breakfast on their patio table. But if I angle my camera so you can see the trash dumpster and the shanty town in the distance, the story becomes something completely different.
Is it any wonder that I now prefer to write fiction? When I strip my tales of facts, then I can finally tell my own truths, rather than other people’s truths
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