Books: falsehood or poetic truth

AN INTERESTING debate at the Royal Society of Literature last week: two young British travel writers disagreed on the virtues of veracity in travel writing. Rory MacLean, who has written a number of travel books, including one that is self-confessedly partially fictionalised, thought it was perfectly acceptable for a writer to create composite figures (i.e. fictionalised characters) in pursuit of a deeper truth. Rory Stewart, author of a brilliant account of the failures of governance in post-“liberated” Iraq and another of a walk through Afghanistan, retorted:

I'm just worried that we're being pushed into a backwater of elegant but ultimately disengaged prose.

Personally, I am on the fence on this one. I can't stand the fact that some well known travel writers cheerily fabricate events. On the other hand, Norman Lewis, my candidate for the greatest contemporary travel writer, has obviously created atmospheric accounts of some experiences and used quotes of conversations that occurred half a century ago without (in my opinion) being guilty of any literary crime.

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poetic truth

September 20, 2007 - 12:25 — Visitor

I read Rory Mac Lean's Magic Bus. I loved it. But a friend of mine asked whether it was fiction or not. I said it was a memoir of his travels, but later realized it was part fiction.

Nonetheless, travel writing is still literature. And in the end the author should have crreative license as to how the book turns out to be, and if creativity entails fictionalised "characters in pursuit of a 'deeper truth'", so be it.