The Definition of "Truth"

"Why are facts so hard to fit into a lyric sentence?" – Wayne Koestenbaum

Speaking of oppositions… these two men could not be more apart when it comes to defining the boundaries of “literary nonfiction” and the concept of essay writing: John D’Agata and Jim Fingal.  An essayist and teacher of creative writing at the University of Iowa versus a professional fact checker. 

However, a seven-year dispute between the two of them actually led to a collaboration: The Lifespan of a Fact. In the blub the book is called an “eye-opening meditation on the relationship between ‘truth’ and ‘accuracy’”. But it is more of a full-blown discussion: An outspoken one, in which D’Agata and Fingal quickly turn into adversaries, pleading for their cause. D’Agata wants to tell a story, his story – and Fingal wants him to tell it right, because it is a story which actually happened in real life. It is the story of Levi Presley.

It is the story of a sixteen-year-old boy who jumped off the observation deck of the 1,149-foot high tower of Stratosphere Hotel in Las Vegas. The language D’Agata uses to tell his readers about this suicide is a very lyrical one: allusions, rhythm, metaphors – all this is very important to him whose essay therefore quickly develops a certain tone. But Fingal’s job is to check if those beautiful words are also true. 

The Lifespan of a Fact started in 2003 when Harper’s Magazine which first commissioned the essay rejected it because of “factual inaccuracies”. In 2005, a magazine called The Believer decided to publish the article after having it fact-checked by Jim Fingal. The book which is based on the emails exchanged between author and fact checker was not published earlier than in 2012. 

The book's layout reveals how animated this discussion via email must have been: In the middle of every page, there is the “core”, the discussion’s basis, snippets from the essay – and all around it there are Fingal’s comments: Printed in alarming scarlet letters when D’Agata has again “violated the rules of journalistic integrity”. Example?

“We therefore know that when Levi Presley jumped from the tower of the Stratosphere Hotel at 6:01:43 p.m. – eventually hitting the ground at 6:01:52 p.m. – there were over a hundred tourists in five dozen cars that were honking […]”

Fingal: “Factual Dispute: […] According to the Coroner’s Report, Levi Presley’s fall supposedly only took eight seconds”

D’Agata: “I needed him fall for nine seconds rather than eight in order to make some later themes in the essay work […] I began thinking about ways that the number nine could play a thematic role in the essay”

Fingal: “It would ‘ruin’ it to make it more accurate?”

D’Agata: “Yup.”

In their conversation, D’Agata states very clearly right from the beginning that “I have no interest in pretending to be a reporter or in producing journalism”. However, Fingal’s job is to check how accurate his descriptions really are.

D’Agata: “This is an essay, so journalistic rules don’t belong here.”

Fingal: “I’m not sure if it’s going to be quite that easy.”

It is not. It takes 123 pages for them to discuss the matter, Fingal finding “Factual Disputes” and D’Agata justifying them. Fingal wants D’Agata to prove simply everything he writes which can be very annoying. The Lifespan of a Fact  really makes you think – and it ceases with a very surprising end. 

So we learn that essayism is not journalism.  That nonfiction can be also a work of art. But what about reportage? Is it allowed to write, for example, that somebody smiled while saying something, although the writer cannot prove this as a fact or cannot even really remember, although it would make the story much more vivid, enjoyable, touching? What do we really know and what is it that we assume while telling a story? 

The idea of a binary opposition of journalism and literature has been fascinating me for quite a while now. I dug deep into this subject when I worked on my master’s thesis in German Studies where I went back in time and worked with texts of so-called “poet-journalists” at the beginning of the 20^th century – a time where this clear-cut distinction between literature and journalism did not exist yet.

I have to admit that I had no idea that the occupation of a full-time fact checker exists in Germany as well.  I was even more surprised when I learned that according to the Columbia Journalism Review, Der Spiegel “is home to what is most likely the world’s largest fact checking operation employing the equivalent of eighty full-time fact checkers as of 2010.”

Isn’t it even more surprising considering that in 2010, René Pfister’s “Am Stellpult”, an article about Bavaria’s governor Horst Seehofer, was published in this exact same magazine? Pfister had been awarded one of the most renowned journalistic distinctions in Germany, the Egon-Erwin-Kisch-Preis, for this story. But the jury withdrew the prize after Pfister was asked if he had really been to Seehofer’s house and seen his model railroad with his own eyes. He had to deny, he just told the story how he thought it could have been.  (Btw: The prize for the best reportage is named after the infamous “Rasende Reporter”, the roving reporter, Egon Erwin Kisch, a man who also took some liberties with “truth” from time to time…)

I want to close with John D’Agata’s definition of “essay”: “Even etymologically ‘essay’ means ‘an attempt.’ And so, as a writer of essays, my interpretation if that charge is that I try – that I try – to take control of something before it is lost entirely to chaos.”

It is the opposite of loss … again.