Monday, August 31, 2009

Truthtelling

An interesting piece in the New York Times about Julie Myerson's memoir of her son's drug addiction. I've been following this story since it first broke in the UK, where Myerson has been branded a terrible mother, a liar, an opportunist and self-aggrandizer. Now we'll see how the U.S. audience responds. My guess is she'll be just fine.

In some sense all family stories have a Rashomon quality. Ms. Myerson is candid about her son’s behavior and her own painful abandonment by her father when she was 16. But she barely mentions a year of marital strife that her son identifies as the time he started using drugs regularly. Asked why, Ms. Myerson responded the same way she did to her son: “This can only ever be my story from my perspective, and all I can say is I’ve been as truthful as I’m capable of being.”

4 comments:

S.P. Miskowski said...

Fascinating questions. This reminded me of something I read earlier today. A.S. Byatt's criticism of writers who use real people in their work:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/aug/13/byatt-novelists-real-life-characters

Not saying I agree. I just think it's interesting.

Suzanne Morrison said...

This looks fascinating-- I'll squirrel it away for later today. Thanks for passing it on!

YogaLia said...

I don't understand how I didn't know you had a blog of your own! Probably because I'm a giant flaming narcissist!! I'm so happy to get to read up on you...reading up.

Suzanne Morrison said...

Hi Lia! So glad to see you here!