Memoirs and Alaska

How Truthful is the Memoir? And Does it Matter?

Introduction

Most of life isn’t all that interesting. We spend a lot more time carrying out repetitive activities than we would like to admit. The routine of working and consuming takes up the majority of our lives, but there will be moments and events where a fire lights up in our eyes and a spotlight shines on us. These don’t have to be as short as a first kiss or a graduation ceremony. These can be a party holiday with college friends to Amsterdam or a two-month long climbing expedition to the peak of Everest. These things must be temporary because if they weren’t then they would become routine too. This piece will look into these moments through the lens of the memoir and other forms of life writing, and how author’s translate important experiences of their lives to the page, specifically the acts of wandering and adventuring. It will focus on the contradicting nature of these writing forms and the controversial levels of truthfulness they exhibit.

Patti Miller gives the definition of a memoir in her text The Memoir Book as an ‘aspect of life’ (2007, p. 3). Miller goes on to say that ‘one can write a memoir of childhood, or a year in Turkmenistan, or of a relationship with a parent (p. 3). Memoirs invite their readers into something personal to the author. Fundamentally, writers just want to tell interesting stories. And what could possibly be more liberating than that being something directly from their lives? Miller believes memoirs are popular because they ask the question ’how is it for you to be in the world?’ (p. 6) They allow someone else to experience life through the writer’s eyes. The relationship between an author and their text is a major part of converting this to the reader. This piece will look at two texts from different time periods that present the memoir in very different ways.

The first is The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, written in 1972 by Daniel Defoe. The novel presents itself as a true account of the life of trouble-finder Moll, detailing her various urban adventures from birth to death, and how she navigates the world around her to ensure her own survival. What makes this text interesting is how it differs from the definition of a memoir given above. Defoe wrote his text as if Moll the protagonist was writing it herself. It presents itself as something that more closely resembles an autobiography, and a false, fictional one nonetheless. It is also interesting to examine it alongside the definition of a memoir. The second text is Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed. Written in 2012, Strayed details her 1,100 mile hike in 1992 from the US-Mexico border in California to the US-Canada border in British Columbia. Her text stays more faithful to what a memoir is defined to be, and is interesting to parallel alongside Defoe’s very experimental style written over 200 year prior. However, presenting itself as a faithful memoir opened Wild up to a range of criticism, largely because any reader’s doubts in Strayed’s truthfulness were taken more seriously. Alongside this piece, I will include samples of my own memoir covering my travels around Alaska and the rest of the United States at a very strange time in my life. In it I describe my own personal contradictory nature of wanting to be both an urban dweller and wilderness wanderer at the same time, and my juxtaposed feelings to being cut off from society and the ones I love.

Further Definitions

The different forms of life writing this piece is exploring can have overlapping definitions. In his text On Autobiography (Theory & History of Literature), Philippe Léjeune references the ‘autobiographical pact’ as being ‘in a spirit of truth’ (1989, p. 31). ‘Spirit of truth’ doesn’t mean exact truth. The fact that the definition by a critic is somewhat vague could be seen to represent the divide in life writing between readers and authors. If authors are writing in the ‘spirit of truth’ but readers are expecting the exact truth, it is no surprise that controversy arises in this area so often. Nancy K Miller comments on Léjeune in her text The Entangled Self: Genre Bondage in the Age of the Memoir, noting that while ‘some of the details might not stand up to googling’ that the modern reader would ‘expect to be reading the truth’ (2007, p. 538) when picking up a memoir. While criticising Léjeune’s vagueness to do with ‘truth’, Miller is also acknowledging here that readers don’t expect every fact presented to have evidence behind it. In this area of writing everything is expected to be true, but the problem is there isn’t always a way to prove it.

In Wild, Strayed spends the majority of her journey alone, so readers have to take her word for the things she says. At the beginning of her book she attaches an author’s note: ‘I relied upon my personal journals, researched facts when I could, consulted with several of the people who appear in the book and called upon my own memory of these events.’ She also states that she ‘occasionally omitted people and events’ (2012, p. 1). Her ‘journals’ are concrete, but because everything wouldn’t have been recorded, she also gave the less concrete example of her own ‘memories.’ This element was criticised because she wrote and released her book twenty years later, causing some to doubt how well she would have remembered it.

Readers expect the truth, but writers have more than one way of telling a story truthfully. They could tell the story of what physically happened, without delving into their own thoughts, but does this mean they are lying by not disclosing everything? Should they have to reveal everything for it to be considered true? Is revealing everything even possible? Life writing, even defined by Léjeune, isn’t referred to as truth but something close to it. While everyday readers may expect this writing form to be true, it is actually, by definition, not entirely. Is it really fair to criticise an author for breaking rules as ambiguous and contradictory as these?

Back to Patti Miller in The Memoir Book, she first defines the term ‘life writing’ as meaning ‘non-fiction writing on subjects of personal experience and observation’ (p. 3), which includes all types of life writing, such as memoir, autobiography and biography. While Miller defined a memoir as an ‘aspect of life,’ she states how an autobiography is ‘generally agreed to be an account of a whole life’ while a ‘biography seems clearly enough an account of someone else’s life’ (p. 3). Again, terms such as ‘generally agreed’ and ‘clearly enough’ are not definite.

Cheryl Strayed’s Wild may fit relatively neatly into the definition of a memoir, but Defoe’s Moll Flanders falls into a slightly more tricky category. Moll is neither an autobiography or biography, but a pseudo- autobiography. Defoe writes as Moll writing about her life. Even in the preface, before the opening chapters even begin, the novel is described as being ‘written from her memorandums’ and how the author is ‘writing her own history’ (1971, p. 1). This could catch a reader unknowingly off-guard, in a section of the book that is normally written by the author detailing some true aspect of their lives. Here, Defoe delves straight into his character and has Moll do that for him, making it even easier than usual for a reader to accept the fictional character they are following as the author.

In her section of a paper on pseudo-autobiography, Siobhan Lyons states that ‘through the lens of pseudo-autobiography, an author is able to deliberately deceive and confuse the reader by utilising both fact and fiction to create a ‘hyperreal autobiographical narrative’ (Writing the celebrity pseudo-autobiography: hauntings in Ellis and Ellroy, 2014, p. 678). This is essentially what all writers do, but Defoe takes it to a greater degree. He combines elements of his own life and the lives of others with fiction, to create his ‘hyperreal autobiographic narrative.’

In my own writing below, I too struggled with the balance of how much to reveal. What began as a memoir of my travels soon became a tale of my inner thoughts that accompanied my trip.

Creative Sample Extract, Part 1

I Didn’t Find Myself

It was midnight when my flight landed into Fairbanks International Airport and the sun was beating down with an incredible intensity.

When you think about Alaska, you think about snow and the freezing cold. In May, however, it is almost never dark with no snow in sight. Temperatures reached almost 30 degrees Celsius in the first few days I spent in the city of Fairbanks amongst its silent, deserted streets. I didn’t sleep much that first night, not because of the jet-lag, but because the sun pierced through the windows so bright that the thin hostel curtains didn’t stand a chance. It had always been my dream to travel the US, to cut myself off from life back home, and now my dear friend Alex and I were doing just that. I couldn’t wait to get started. This, however, is not a true reflection of my experience. Well, it may be a true reflection of what I wanted it to be. A true reflection of the parts I like to remember. But the reality was very different to that.

It all started to go wrong at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. My friend Alex and I arrived there from London to find almost every ownward flight delayed. Our specific flight to Seattle was delayed by two hours, which meant we would in-turn miss our next flight to Fairbanks. After queuing for a while it was our turn to complain, where we were told we’d be waiting at least 24 hours for a flight.

‘There’s a flight here.’ Alex showed them his phone. ‘If there’s tickets available there must be seats.’

‘Of course,’ the Delta airline representative said with a smile plastered on his face, ‘sorting it now.’

Many hours later we landed in Fairbanks at midnight, ready to begin our hike that day. We just had to wait for our luggage. I watched as one by one people picked up briefcases and backpacks, but soon we realised there was nothing left for us.

‘We’re sorry, your luggage is still in Atlanta.’

Right, of course. It was always doomed to be there, really. A huge airport. Lots of delays. In what universe would our luggage have actually ended up on the same flight as us? Probably none. But that was okay. That was completely fine. We were told our luggage would be there the next day so we just had to wait. Again.

Delta Airline’s slogan is ‘Keep Climbing.’ ‘Keep Climbing’ has since become a recurring joke that Alex and I say whenever we think relevant. Fall over in the street? ‘Keep Climbing.’ Spend all your paycheque on a single night out? ‘Keep Climbing.’ Accidentally spill a drink over your laptop? Just ‘Keep Climbing’ buddy.

We arrived at our hostel empty handed, the guy that checked us in didn’t seem too surprised by that (take from that what you will, Delta). The American accent of the check-in guy’s ‘hey’ hit me instantly, and my own British accent felt immediately out of place. I had nothing to unpack, so just lay in the hostel bed, staring at the midnight sun shining through those terrible curtains, and decided to call André.

I think André was the universe’s way of being cruel. He came into my life one month before I was due to leave for my US trip. I hadn’t dated for a long time and we did all those things together that you don’t really get to do by yourself. Whether it was a trip to the cinema, a nice meal or exploring a new area. We were just hanging out and having a great time together, then one day we were talking.

‘My friends are so jealous of what we are,’ Andre said.

‘And what are we?’ I replied. There was a pause after this. A pause that seemed to last forever. The goosebumps raised on my skin. André’s face looked sad for a moment.

‘We’ll know what we are when you get back,’ he said. We both wanted to say more, but it was safest to say nothing at all. Unfortunately for me this meant two things for my trip.

1. I could not enjoy my time with André because obviously we were apart. Our relationship could not develop the way we knew it was about to.

2. I could not enjoy my time travelling the US because our relationship was in that beginning state. I wanted to talk to him, to message him, to use my phone whenever I could. My dream of being cut off from the real world became my worst nightmare.

(And a special thanks to my phone networks provider’s data plan for allowing me to use my phone literally anywhere in the United States.) I couldn’t use the excuse of no wifi or having to pay extra to use my phone. I could use it all the time, completely for free. Instead of focusing on my travelling, or my friend doing this trip with me, I poured my focus into my phone.)

Except in a place called Denali National Park.

We had finally recieved our luggage and taken the Alaskan railroad up from Fairbanks, and three hours later were checking in at the closest campsite to the front desk. It was colder up north. The alpine trees and mountains were lightly covered with snow. We soon pitched up our tent, got a fire going, and boiled some instant noodles.

The next morning we started our two day hike. I was finally climbing. It was a trail that led deep into the national park, past the Savage and Teklanika rivers and up a small mountain with a view of the entire area. What was strange about this, though, was that now I wouldn’t be able to use my phone. No phone signal got through that deep into the park. For two days I would have no contact with André. It was going to finally be a chance to connect with the nature. A chance to experience the wild for what it was.

‘This is what I’ve been waiting for,’ I told myself.

Creative Sample Extract Part 1 Analysis, Introducing the Flâneur and the Dérive

In my extract, I wanted to experiment with writing non-fiction of my own life, much like Strayed in Wild, as it is something different to anything else I have written while studying at university. I also wanted to explore two concepts that link in with my extract and the two texts I am discussing, these are the Flâneur and the Dérive.

Guy Debord describes a dérive as when a person decides to ‘drop their relations, their work, their leisure activities, and all their other usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions and the terrain and the encounters they find there’ (Theory of the Dérive, 1958, p. 62.). A flâneur, as Kevin Milburn describes it, is a ‘stroller’ who undertakes a dérive, specifically in an ‘urban context.’ (Following the Flâneur: a methodological and textual critique, 2003, p.1) My own journey across the United States could be seen as my attempt at dropping my life for spontaneous travel. I focused on my phone and my relationship with André because they highlight how difficult it is to cut yourself off from society in the present day due to technology. Strayed planned her trip so excessively that her backpack ‘wouldn’t budge’ (p. 42) the first time she packed it, and that when she did lift it, it ‘seemed like a Volkswagen Beetle that was parked on [her] back’ (p. 43). She had bought a mountain of things and prepared for every possibly scenario, not something that a classic dérive would do at all. Both Strayed and I had the dream of leaving society, but organised everything as if we were still there.

Originally, my extract was going to be more about the things that went wrong on the trip, as the beginning with the luggage highlights, but while writing André kept coming to mind, so I decided to lean into it. I wanted the line ‘and decided to call André’ to surprise my readers. I used it to represent how easy it is for memoir writers to leave out elements of their stories or to focus on certain aspects. The story stood on its own at the beginning but then became all about André. I discovered through my own writing what truth in life writing can really mean. I felt that as a writer I wouldn’t be telling the truth if I didn’t mention André, due to him being such a big part of my trip, always on my mind. It ironically took taking a dérive for me to appreciate what I had back home. This writing experiment taught me that it is easier to recall feelings than events. I felt that if I didn’t convey how I felt then that was the biggest lie of them all, as I wasn’t even being true to myself. It gave me a much greater appreciation for Strayed and her use of flashbacks to earlier points in her life to help shape her novel, because feelings, memories and emotions can be easier to recall than events and conversations. Strayed tells the reader that her hike truly began on the day she ‘learned that [her] mother was going to die’ (p. 10). I feel that recalling emotions can be a way of conveying the truth when actual events are a little blurry, almost as a loophole around the truth.

Moll Flanders, Further Analysis

Moll is constantly at the mercy of her circumstances, being thrown from one situation to another. Her entire life seems to be one long dérive that she didn’t choose for herself. Gerald Howson explores this in his text Thief-Taker General: Jonathan Wild and the Emergence of Crime and Corruption as a Way of Life in Eighteenth Century England. He discusses Defoe’s time spent in Newgate himself. Defoe focuses his writing on ‘satire on extreme Tory attitudes,’ and the judges sentenced him to ‘stay in Newgate until he had paid a fine that was so large that, they hoped, it would keep him there for the rest of his life’ (p. 40). Interestingly, it was Defoe’s honest feelings towards the government that got him tried in the first place, which could perhaps be a reason for his different approach with Moll in terms of authorship identity and style. While readers may want the truth, sometimes the truth can be damning or dangerous for the author.

While Moll is a pseudo-autobiography, it could contain biographical elements from one person in particular: Moll King. Defoe interviewed King while she served time in Newgate. Howson tells how she was known as the ‘famous robber of the ladies of their gold watches’ (p. 169) just like Moll Flanders herself. Despite both of them being notoriously known for stealing on the streets of London and ending up in Newgate, Howson admits that he does not believe that Moll is essentially Moll KIng’s ‘fictionalised biography’ (p. 167) but more ‘that she gave [Defoe] the kernel of the idea’ (p. 167) for the novel.

Moll Flanders’ life is so chaotic, it is almost as if her entire life is a string of memoir’s joined together. Every section of her life is one that an average person would find remarkable. With every part worth lamenting. This shows in the full version of the novel’s title, which is:

‘The Fortune’s and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders. Who was born in Newgate, and during a life of continued variety for threescore years despite her childhood, was twelve years a whore, five times a wife (whereof once to her own brother) twelve year a thief, eight year a transported felon in Virginia, at last grew rich, lived honest, and died a penitent. Written from her own memorandums.’

Despite every word Defoe writes in the novel committing to the facade he has created, the reader knows that he is still the real author, and that they are indeed reading a novel. Defoe is not claiming to be something he is not, despite paradoxically claiming just that in his writing. Defoe’s novel is fiction presented as non-fiction.

For a part of her life, Moll becomes almost the very definition of a flâneur, even more so than Strayed in Wild, being an urban adventurer. She goes out on her ‘excursions’ or ‘adventures’ (p. 171) waiting for opportunities to steal. She does not go out with specific locations and people in mind, but instead roams the streets of London and sees what oppurtunities presnt themelves. The only difference between Moll and the flâneur by definition is that she does not drop her every day life to become it, instead she lives it as her every day life.

Moll’s story is a quest for survival. She can barely get by and makes questionable moral choices to survive. In Wild, Cheryl Strayed goes on her own dérive, but by choice, and into the wilderness. She comes from a privileged background and puts herself into a situation where she is forced to survive, to give her life purpose and face the troubles of her past alone.

Wild, Further Analysis

By seemingly maintaining her novel within the boundaries of a memoir, Strayed actually puts herself in a dangerous position. Defoe’s novel is known to be fiction, but with Strayed’s being presented as the truth she has garnered some criticism due to moments where the truth appears questionable. Janice Harayda addresses some concerns in her review of Wild:

‘Why didn’t Wild appear in print until 17 years after she took her three-month trip the summer of 1995? How do we know that the thoughts she says she had on the trail occurred then and not years later as she shaped her story for publication? Aren’t some of the line-by- line conversations in her book far too long for her to have transcribed in the journal she carried with her?’ (‘Why I’m Not Wild About Cheryl Strayed’s Wild’, 2013)

This can be compared to her earlier author’s note. Most conversations Strayed has in her memoir with other hikers seem a bit long to all be recorded word for word in her ‘journals.’ ‘Consulting’ those she met and going back to her own ‘memories’ are acceptable, but some moments are in such detail that none of these methods seem like they would be enough.

In the present day, travels are typically more planned than in the past. Back to Milburn’s paper discussed earlier, Milburn goes on to say that ‘the respectful woman could not stroll alone’ (p. 6). Being a flâneur was not taken by a woman traditionally. Even Strayed, in the modern day, is seen as an anomaly. She became almost famous on the trail for no other reason than being a woman. Set in the past, Moll does almost this but does not have the same level of respect.

The death of Strayed’s mother is woven through her entire book. ’I’ll always be with you, no matter what’ (p. 267) her mother says to her. Her mother’s death sent Strayed spiralling into a life of drugs and cheating on her husband, and is the reason she goes on her hike to find peace with it all. She finds peace in the end, not by removing her grief or overcoming it, but by making room for it and being able to ‘let it be’ (p. 311) Moll also comes full circle, with her ending up in Newgate prison where she began her life. It is questionable whether either of them change though, instead it appears they find peace with the person they have both become. They accept the truth.

When writing about my own journey, I found my feelings were a much truer reflection of my experience. If I couldn’t remember a small fact, I left it out, but I could always remember how I felt. A part of me agrees with Strayed’s critics, I believe it almost impossible for all her conversations to be entirely correct. But I disagree with her critics in another sense, because I believe it doesn’t entirely matter. An action reflects character, which reflects the truth of that person. The way she felt in that moment was true. The type of relationship she had with that person was true. Perhaps the exact words don’t need to be right. This could, however, put readers off, and make them question more important elements of her novel. It could be hard for them to believe anything at all if they discover one thing they don’t think is true. But these are part of the difficulties of life writing. As writers, we must try our best to communicate our true selves onto the page, and hope everything else comes through with it.

Creative Sample Extract, Part 2

We started early at about 5am. It was 8pm back in England. Alex and I got on one of the national park’s free shuttle buses, got off at its final stop and walked into the wild. One of my first steps happened to be in an incredibly deep puddle, and in that one moment the heat that we had down south in Fairbanks seemed a distant memory. Before we had even been walking for an hour the ice began to form on my backpack and my face and feet were turning numb. A while later, and my backpack was making my body bleed in at least four different places, rubbing against patches of skin like sandpaper.

It was all worth it though. I may have suffered, but the views… the mountains… the way they seemed to sing as the wind whistled between them… it was all worth it. The valleys stretched on for miles and miles as far as the eye could see. I always had such a fond love of mountains, I could stare at them all day, and I did. I could never, ever get bored of simply gazing upon their might. I was in a different world.

The silence was inevitable in every hike, whether solo or in a group, but during that time

you think. You begin to think a lot. And all I could think about was André. He took up my entire mind. I was walking alongside Alex but it was almost as if I wasn’t even present. I thought of everything André and I had done so far, of what he may be doing right now, and then I found myself thinking what we could be doing right now if I wasn’t walking in the wilderness. We could be warm, laughing at our favourite tv show and eating takeaway pizza. But that wasn’t what I wanted, was it? I didn’t want society. I didn’t want boring routine. But when walking out there, in the cold with no sign of humans as far as you can see, it’s hard to justify it to yourself. Why did I want this? I began to ask. I was in a lot of pain. Why on earth would a sane person want this? I began to lose understanding of myself. I did want this. That much will always be true. But I began to ask why and I could not answer my own question. My time cut off from André was not a time in which he was not with me, quite the opposite actually. Me being cut off from him made me think about him all the more.

Normally, when I was thinking about him, a simple message would suffice and then I could go back to enjoying my time. But out there, unable to do so, I couldn’t stop thinking. I began to look down, lost in thought, ignoring the mountains and my friend who had decided to take this trip with me. I was scared of losing André. Why would someone want someone like me? I wondered. Someone who preferred to be out here than at home? As more time passed my worry changed to anger at myself. How dare I? What sort of privilege did I have? I was in Alaska, a place many dream of going but few ever do, and all I was thinking about was home. This was something I had dreamed of for as long as I could remember. How could I spend even one moment not appreciating it?

Those 48 hours felt like I crammed five years worth of my life into them. And all that time waiting. When we finally got back to camp I rushed straight to my phone and called him. His smile lit up my face, and I lit up his. He told me how much he missed me and how he wished he could be there right now. And I told him the same.

‘Oh my god, I think I am actually in love with you,’ he told me out of no where. I didn’t know how to react to that. And then I did something crazy. Something ridiculous. Something insane.

‘Do you remember what we talked about before? Well, I don’t think I want to wait until I get back. I was wondering if you wanted to be my boyfriend?’

André said yes. I didn’t want to lose him. I was so scared. Travelling was everything to me, but it’s only travelling if you have something to come home to. And that thing was him. If I was going to spend my time out there thinking about him, then it was damn well going to be worth something.

Of course I soon realised all I had really done was up the stakes. For there would be more hikes. And now now those times would be even harder.

Creative Sample Extract Part 2 Analysis, Linking Authors and Readers

In Denali National Park I intended to leave everything behind to find myself but ended up leaving an anchor behind with a chain attached firmly to my ankle. I look back at that now, how I ran to my phone. Thats not who I imagine myself being. That’s not the person who loves the freedom of being cut off. But that doesn’t matter. I am obviously different to how I imagine myself being, and that’s okay. I still haven’t really figured out who I am. I definitely didn’t find myself on that trip, in fact, I know myself even less than I ever did. Maybe knowing ourselves isn’t important, as long as we do what feels right, and be true to ourselves.

The contradiction of my different mindsets was and still is hard for me to rationalise. But I am content with my lack of understanding of myself, and as Strayed said, to ‘let it be.’ The same juxtaposing elements tend to accompany the memoir as a form. The truth can be vague, but it can depend on what sort of truth is being looked at. Does truth mean what factually happened, or what people were thinking at the time? Can truth ever have some omission, or must it include everything to be considered the truth? Is it even possible to include everything? Perhaps it is never possible to be completely true in a memoir because sometimes we are not completely true to ourselves or even willing to face the truth, such as me considering not to even mention André in my memoir, which would have been a ridiculous lack of truth. Readers expecting the truth may have had a boomerang affect and resulted in writers adding fabricated elements to their stories to make them seem more true, such as Defoe’s presentation of Moll or Strayed’s author’s note. Her admittance that some things may not be true comes across as honest, and thus, true. I wanted my piece to be about my hike but André kept coming to mind and I couldn’t ignore it. It may all come down to our complex nature, and how we want more than one thing at the same time, and have difficulty accepting that two things can be mutually exclusive.

In his text How Novels Work, John Mullen states that readers want to feel like they are reading ‘real people’ (2008, p. 79). In real life, development or change may not happen. Moll has been given certain fictional elements to make her feel like she has had some sort of development. Strayed was criticised for some of the subject matters she included in her piece, such as her mother’s story, but then other critics have criticised her for omitting things, and that she shouldn’t be omitting anything. With her story being true, it can be hard to feel like a real person, ironically, especially if a clear development or transition wasn’t apparent. Being true to ourselves feels most important, and I believe that if we as writers do that then that will come across in the text.

Conclusion

Taking another look at Philipe Léjeune, he writes ‘all the methods that autobiography uses to convince us of the authenticity of its narrative can be imitated by the novel’ (p. 13). This quote effectively links life writing with stories. The two appear to be trapped in a never-ending paradox. Non-fiction and fiction. Fiction has certain expectations such as character development and story structure, but readers expect this to be realistic also. Both can easily be imitated by the other, appear as something they are not such as Moll Flanders, or often certain parts can bleed through occasionally, such as an altered piece of dialogue, or a character inspired by the author’s real life. Through research and my own writing experimentation, I discovered that even if a text has some inaccuracies, an element of truth will always come from the author. The truth of how they feel, of the message they want to convey or of how they view the world. Strayed’s dialogue was written for a reason. Defoe told the story of Moll Flanders for a reason. A reason personal to the respective author. They present the author’s life behind the pages, and what they wanted their book to be. Defoe’s relationship with Newgate. Strayed’s with her mother and the trail. Mine with André and the wilderness. Being on my own dérive helped me realise that. I believe if a writer cannot remember a factual piece of information, then it should be omitted rather than fabricated. Because it can always be replaced with something else, like the way a person is feeling. A complete truth is not possible, and as readers we should not expect it, only that what we are reading is an honest representation of what the author wants us to read about their life. This is, what I take away as, the meaning behind ‘spirit of truth.’

Bibliography

• Debord, G., 1958. Theory of the Dérive. Internationale Situationniste #2. [Online] Available at: http://www.tbook.constantvzw.org/wp-content/derivedebord.pdf [Accessed on 22 December 2016]
• Defoe, D., 1722. The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders. Reprint 2011. Oxford University Press: New York
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• Howson, G., 1985. Thief-Taker General: Jonathan Wild and the Emergence of Crime andCorruption as a Way of Life in Eighteenth Century England. Transaction Publishers: New Jersey
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• Lyons, S., 2014. Writing the Celebrity Pseudo-autobiography: hauntings in Ellis and Ellroy.Continuum. [e-journal] 28(5) pp. 678-689. Abstract Only. Available through: Macquarie University http://hdl.handle.net/1959.14/319324 [Accessed 21 December 2016]
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• Miller, N. K., 2007. The Entangled Self: Genre Bondage in the Age of the Memoir. PMLA. [e-journal] 122(2) pp. 537-548. Abstract Only. Available through: MLA Journals http://www.mlajournals.org/ [Accessed 19 December 2016]
• Miller, P., 2007. The Memoir Book. Sydney: Allen & Unwin
• Mullen, J., 2008. How Novels Work. Oxford: Oxford University Press
• Strayed, C., 2012. Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. New York: A. Knopf