A Notebook

"How it felt to me: that is getting closer to the truth about a notebook." Joan Didion. Why is it that we keep a notebook, write down seemingly unimportant and irrelevant facts in a book? Joan Didion would argue that it is to remember. But what makes the notebook worth reading, what gives it weight? Certainly rereading events from your previous life provides very little satisfaction, and to anyone other than the writer must be boring; but still we write. Joan Didion said simply, "Why did I write it down? In order to remember, of course, but exactly what was it I wanted to remember?" What do we want to remember so badly that we write it down? It has to be the feeling of course. Pictures capture memories, stories and movies as well, but what makes you relive the moment, makes you feel that same emotion all over again? Writing it down. And in order to feel that same emotion sometimes we bend the truth, "In fact I have abandoned altogether that kind of pointless entry; instead I tell what some would call lies." Joan Didion. This is where entries become arguable, are you bending the truth so much that it becomes a completely different story? Or are you rather exaggerating, lying just enough for the moment to seem real, to feel authentic. This argument is when Joan Didion's assertions on keeping a notebook, meet up with Tim Obrien's assertions on the importance of memories. They both lie to tell what is the most true. They use exaggeration in their speech, and story telling to make the reader believe, to feel what they felt, to make writing more than just words on a paper, but to make it become life.

Where does lying cross the line of helping the reader believe, and cross into making the reader question? It is a tough line to define, and one that Tim Obrien has found quite remarkably. In his book The Things They Carried, he tells the story of himself as a young soldier in the Vietnam war. Something many of his readers don't understand, never knew about, or rarely connected with. For this reason, to make his story contain the sorrow, pain, and depth of the real war he must lie about the small details. He does so because the purpose of his book was never to tell an exact replication of his war, for few people would read it and certainly there would be bias, but rather to tell a war story of the struggle, the hump to beat the war. Obrien's work, his purpose, was to inform his reader of what "really" happened in Vietnam. He forces upon the audience emotions that many don't want to feel. His method of persuasion may not be the most legit, but it worked. While reading his story I several times felt uncomfortable, disturbed, sick to my stomach. And I am sure that if I told Obrien this he would say I was supposed to, it was successful; because surely he never felt giddy and excited while in the war, rather he himself felt disturbed, uncomfortable, and sick to his stomach. He said himself, "But listen. Even that story is made up. I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth." (The Things They Carried, O'Brien, page 171).

So bringing it all together, there will always be accusations, and critiques of the style of writing Didion and Obrien used. It is as inevitable as death, but there will also always be that argument of its success. When you read their works you certainly don't think about what they felt in the moment, you rather place yourself in their shoes. For this to work, for it to carry meaning they must force you into a situation altered to make these emotions the same as theirs. Is it wrong? Some may say yes, others no, but in the end it isn't a question of right or wrong, its a question of why? It is to remember, to re-live the hardest moments. They write so that for them, it all comes back, it is real and tangible and true. So you could say it's wrong or right, smart or dumb, believable of false, it doesn't matter, in the end it is the realest truth. "How it felt to me: that is getting closer to the truth about a notebook."