Talking Travel Writing and Poetic License with Michael Shapiro

Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 02.16.06 | 2:00 AM ET

Watching the controversy over James Frey’s “A Million Little Pieces” unfold in recent weeks, I’ve thought about travel writing, naturally, and the stuff that goes into travel books. I recalled Michael Shapiro’s interviews with many great travel writers in A Sense of Place. I don’t think any of the writers confessed to taking the kind of liberties that Frey has, but like all kinds of nonfiction writers who see their work as art and not straight journalism, many have taken liberties. So when do liberties cross the proverbial line into fiction? There are no laws governing this, of course. It’s all a matter of debate. In that spirit, we just posted a terrific essay by author Tom Bissell, Truth in Oxiana, on the topic. And recalling his many interviews, I dialed up Shapiro today to ask him about it.

Michael Shapiro World Hum: Have you been thinking about travel writing, too, as Oprah vs. James Frey has unfolded?

Shapiro: Sure. It has been a hot topic in travel writing circles. Travel writers have been known to take some liberties. It may be something like reconstructing two pages of dialogue, which somebody like Paul Theroux will do, and he’ll tell you that he’s recollecting it word for word. Or there’s Redmond O’Hanlon, who will say that the dialogue he writes may not be word for word but it is the truth.

And Sara Wheeler? I recall your interview with her being thought-provoking.

Michael Shapiro What Sara Wheeler has done, which many writers and readers will have trouble with, is create a character, and not just that, but a character’s entire family, out of whole cloth. In her defense, she said everybody does this, and that writers always decide to leave some things out, and in doing so are manipulating the facts. But leaving something out is very different, I think, from creating a character. Why not just call it “fiction” if it’s fiction? I think most people in the field would say creating characters is crossing a line. Sara would say it’s not a line. She says it’s nebulous, and that you want to create a work of art.

Any other writers’ responses from your interviews come to mind?

Redmond O’Hanlon wrote about going to Borneo with James Fenton, who falls out of their boat on the river and almost drowns. After he was rescued, Redmond considered writing that they’d passed butterflies along the river, downstream of the accident, which he thought would have been a beautiful scene. But they’d actually passed the butterflies farther upriver. He didn’t take that liberty in the book, and later, he learned the butterflies live only upstream of the rapids, and so he realized that if he had changed it to make the butterflies appear downstream it would have been factually wrong. It would have been evident that he had manipulated the story. He had a gut feeling it wasn’t the right thing to do. He’s a naturalist and biologist and takes a lot of pride in getting it right.

Any others?

Jonathan Raban said something interesting. He said that writers aren’t out there to say this happened and that happened. They’re out there to create works of art. He talked about how his artistic process is one of forgetting. He comes back with all these notes and then forgets them to create a work of art. He writes novels and he writes books based on his travels. He says he doesn’t see a distinction between fiction and nonfiction. It’s always been interesting to me that we don’t say “fiction” and “fact,” we say “fiction” and “nonfiction.” Raban made the point that “fiction” is not a word meaning “false,” it’s from the Latin root fictia, which means “to give shape to.”

What did you think of the ruckus over “A Million Little Pieces”?

I think Frey is just the guy who got caught because Oprah gave him some attention. To me it’s overblown. It’s not right, what he did. But it’s our current national distraction, this week’s episode of how-to-not-pay-attention-to-what’s-really-important.

You began your career as a newspaper reporter, didn’t you?

Yes. And when travel editors have told me, “I like your story but I’d like to put this or that at the end,” and I tell them it happened earlier in the trip, the editor often says, “It’s a travel story, so let’s move it around a bit.” I’ve grown to accept that resequencing events is sometimes acceptable, but I think there is a line. If we’re going to write nonfiction and journalism, we have a responsibility to our readers to make it true.

But where, exactly, is the line?

Making up characters is crossing the line.

What about making up dialogue?

I think with dialogue you have to be as true to what was said as you can. Dialogue is not going to be perfect. You have to strive for accuracy and the truth and have the intent of recounting what happened. Moving stuff around, okay. Willfully making stuff up or fabricating events, no.

Thanks, Michael.

Related on World Hum:
* Q&A with Michael Shapiro: A Sense of Place
* Truth in Oxiana