Good morning! It’s Friday, that time of the week when I share some of my memoir with you, so you may tell your friends, and I may grow my newsletter, which, what with the excited and excitable throngs of followers, will help convince an agent and editor to buy my book. Or maybe it’s almost the weekend. Either way, we win!
If you search the internet for information about using real names in writing memoir, you will find a great many blogs discussing this topic. Use real names. Don’t use real names. Create false names. Use real names, but only after everyone has died. Use initials. Use an initial and a dash.
It’s not as simple as just changing names. If the people are not concealed well enough, they can still sue. One famous case is of Augusten Burroughs, who changed the name of the family he lived with to Finch. Of course, they knew who he lived with, and they sued him. There was a settlement of an undisclosed amount. Burroughs also had to call his work a “book” instead of a “memoir.”
At the end of her book, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, Anne Lamott’s Part Five and last chapter, “The Last Class,” takes up the issue of libel and writing about people in your life. Some writers say you should never write out of vengeance, while she says, “I tell my students that they should always write out of vengeance, as long as they do so nicely.” She also says, “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should've behaved better.” This is instruction for writng the unvarnished truth.
But she also explains what libel is: “defamation by written or printed word. It is knowingly, maliciously saying things about people that cast them in a false or damaging light.” But what if those things are true? The problem is, we don’t walk around with tape recorders, and one person’s memory of an event is not going to be the same as another person’s. And voila! we have courts of law to decide these things. I know what happened to me, and I have some documentary evidence, but still, I know the people in my life will deny and call “bullshit,” because they can’t look at themselves in a negative light.
So do I change their names? Anne Lamott says that if you change certain features and make the person unrecognizable from their original selves, then you can cover yourself. She says, “give them a teenie little penis.” They won’t come forward as quickly.
Sue William Silverman, whose Fearless Confessions: A Writer’s Guide to Memoir is a giant of a memoir craft book, thinks you should tell things as they are. She has written several memoirs about sensitive topics. I don’t know why I tiptoe around it since she writes about it outright - being sexually abused by her father and have a sex addiction. So she doesn’t shy away from naming names.
Silverman says, “Since my family was involved in the creation of who I am, I feel justified, even obliged, as a writer, to reveal the roles they played. It was because my father molested me that I suffered from sex addiction, an eating disorder, even, in part, received bad SATs. . . . How can I write a life, be a memoirist, without including members of my family?” (pg 117).
Here’s the catch. She says, “My main sadness as a writer and as a daughter in my family is that I didn’t write these truths while my parents were still alive” (pg. 117). So in some ways, Silverman’s case doesn’t answer my question of whether you should name names while the people who wronged you in your life - the people you will be in a forever “he said, she said” battle with - are still alive. To not tell her story, however, Silverman argues, would just be another way to silence her. So she tells her story.
And thus, I feel emboldened. I will tell my story. If, at the appropriate times, a publisher’s lawyer says, “so, about this Character X or Y . . . ,” then I can deal with it.
A Betrayal
One of my sisters didn’t like close family friends, but she kept up pretenses of civility because they were rich and useful. My sister’s relationships with everyone were always transactional. She once told me she kept in touch with a rich, distant relative because, “His money has to go to somebody!”
These family friends, Dori and Frank, were dear dear friends of my parents, once neighbors. Frank died, and later, Dori remarried. I lived in Kansas and saw them briefly during Christmas holidays, where I was introduced to George, Dori’s new husband. I, of course, knew Dori from childhood. She and my mother were pregnant together. I was born two weeks before JFK’s assassination. Dori’s youngest son, Michael, was born three weeks after me, so a week after the assassination. They were rich, Republican, church-going Presbyterians. They were everything we were not. We were upper middle class, but definitely not rich. But we had a comfortable home, a swimming pool, yearly vacations and so on. Dori and Frank had all that and much more. But we were the kinds of friends who were family, people to rely on. Michael and I had many formative childhood events together, birthdays, holidays, vacations.
When Frank got ill, Michael was away at college. Frank suffered terrible pain to the extent that he had a heart attack while they were treating him. They couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him. I stayed at the hospital for Dori, waiting for Michael to arrive from northern California. Of course he was flustered when he got there. Frank died, and had the biggest funeral I have ever seen. He was a popular, well-liked man, suddenly stricken and died unexpectedly. He was an avid church goer, a wood worker who had made the large cross for the church. Michael and I drifted apart, though we were never very close. But we knew each other fairly well. Our families celebrated holidays together, especially Christmas and Easter.
Later, Michael got married and had a friend of his be his best man. I wasn’t even invited to the wedding. Fifteen or so years later, in town for a visit, I found out why. “Dave stood by me when my dad got sick. He stayed at the hospital and waited for me.” I told Michael, “Michael, that was me. Your father and mother had dinner at our house nine days before your dad got sick. Your mom called my folks at 3:00 in the morning to say they were taking your dad to the hospital, and I showed up and waited for you.” Michael paused for just a beat, looked straight at me, and said, “No, that was Dave.” Dave, of course, also attended his church and had politics like his own.
I was shocked. Did he think I was lying? Or would he have to reckon himself to living a kind of lie in his own life all those years? During that visit, Michael also grilled me about why my then-wife worked. “Because we both work. It takes both of our incomes to live today.” He kind of laughed at that. He said, “In our family, wives don’t work.” It was clear that our paths through life headed down different roads.
I lived in Kansas when Dori remarried, my mom served as her matron-of-honor. when the Parkinsons changed forever from Dori and Frank to Dori and George. My parents and their friends were all in their 60s by this time. When I’d call home to talk to mom and dad, they’d talk about Dori and George, Dori and George, Dori and George. That’s how I knew them.
After my mother died, I was living in San Diego, and for more than two months, my then-wife and I drove up to L.A. to help my sister sort through all the junk, my parents’ belongings, to settle the estate. My sister changed, was irritable, and she was cheating with the estate (she’ll tell you she wasn’t). But I helped her clean that house until she became verbally abusive. When she did, I stopped talking to her, got a lawyer to see after my interests in the estate and let the lawyer be the go-between between her and her lawyer. That took all the emotion out of it and I didn’t have to deal with an angry, embittered, vengeful, spiteful sister anymore. Life is too short for that kind of treatment. She would have never done that if my mother were around or alive, but evidently she felt she could do what she wanted since mom was gone now.
Word got around that my sister thought I was going to sue her, so her daughters (my nieces) stopped talking to me as well. She had a friend serve as intermediary, even though I said I didn’t want any friends involved to get stuck in the middle and lose friends in the process. But my sister didn’t have any respect for my wishes, or anyone else’s. And so now, many years later, all of those life long friends are no longer on speaking terms with me.
Thanks, sis.
At the same time, my marriage started going south not quite 6 months after moving onto a sailboat, with our intention of sailing around the world into retirement. My mind was torn in many directions at once, the trouble with the estate(s) - my aunt had died too and my sister was executor of both estates — and my failing marriage, and bosses that treated me poorly.
At work one day, staring into a canyon, distracted in my head from all the goings-on, I got a phone call. This is one of the minor betrayals you will find in my memoir, no less traumatic for being minor as much of the trauma was from the accumulation of betrayals.
Here’s the story from my memoir.
Part III - The Fire Sermon
26 – Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna Merchant
The dry canyons out my windows at work were pale and crumbling under the January sun. I was daydreaming about sailing when the phone rang.
“Hello Lee. This is George Looming. Your sister Lisa asked me to call to set up mediation about your mother’s estate.”
“Lisa asked you or L-----?
“Yes, L---- asked me to be a mediator for your mother’s estate.” He had confused their names.
“I’m sorry. And you are?”
“I’m George Looming, and I’m going to mediate for your mother’s estate.”
“I’m sorry sir. I’m not interested. I have a lawyer to represent my interests.”
“Well, that’s just it. Your sister doesn’t feel having a lawyer is necessary, and I’m willing to mediate between the two of you.”
“I understand. But I’m not interested. My sister doesn’t get to decide that for me.”
“I don’t think you understand. L----- asked me to call. So, you don’t want to settle this situation by lawful means?”
“That is not what I said. Who are you? I’m at work and really can’t be having this conversation here.”
Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw stares coming from interior offices as doors closed loudly. Another fine day at work.
“I am George Looming, and your sister asked me to mediate . . .”
“I don’t know anyone by that name.”
“Yes, you do. You know me. I’m George Looming.”
“Okay, that’s enough. I will not be using your services. I don’t know who you are, and I already have a lawyer.”
“You do know me. ...”
“I’m sorry. I have to go.”
I hung up and walked downstairs to the outdoor coffee cart. Deep breaths of fresh air helped. Winter in San Diego is bright and warm by most standards. A stroll around the rock bear was often enough to clear my head.
I thought about calling QT, but even after 15 years together, she hated when I called her at work. And I hated that she treated me like shit when I called her. Everybody I knew who had a significant other looked forward to phone calls during the day from loved ones, little respites from work. They would interrupt their boss to take a phone call from a loved one or child, but not QT. She whispered angrily in the phone that she couldn’t talk now, as if I were disturbing her. Every time I called was a buzzing beehive of an argument ready to start.
When I returned to my desk, I had a terrible thought. I did know a “George.” Dori and George, my parents’ closest friends. My sister didn’t like the Parkinsons except when she needed something. And she needed help to resolve that car situation. She still wanted to sell it for her daughters, but I was insistent on principle that it be sold and the proceeds split between the heirs.
I felt immediately bad about the phone call with George. He’s a nice guy who got caught in the middle, but I still didn’t want him to mediate.
Dori and George played cards and went out regularly with my parents. After my father died, they made special trips to visit my Mom every week. They were life-long family friends. Marilynn detested Dori for the ways she prided her children over us. Dori could be difficult to take. She claimed to have converted my atheist father on his death bed. She meant well, as the saying goes. Even Marilynn couldn’t object to how Dori went out of her way to help people. But when Dori and Frank became Dori and George, I was living in Kansas. I met George a few times when we traveled to California for Christmas or vacations, but I didn’t know and had never heard his last name. To me they were “Dori and George.”
Even so, his phone call convinced me even more that I didn’t want family friends getting caught in the middle of things with my sister. It had been less than half an hour since George and I had hung up.
I dialed the number. Dori answered.
“Dori. Hello, this is Lee Hornbrook. Can I speak with George please? We had a terrible misunderstanding.”
Dori huffed audibly. She dropped the phone on the table, and I could hear her yell, “George, it’s that THING on the phone for you.”
What the fuck? Jesus! Okay, then. She never would have acted that way had my mother been alive. That’s Christian charity for you.
“Hello.”
“George. Hello. I want to apologize. I didn’t know it was you when we spoke. I had never heard your last name before . . .”
“No, Lee, you know who I am. We have met many times.”
“George, really, I didn’t know your last name. I took a quick walk to clear my mind, and I put two and two together.”
“You know who I am, Lee.”
“I do now, George, but not when we were talking on the phone. I still don’t want you to mediate. I explained to my sister that I don’t want to have friends get in the middle and have people choose sides and get hurt, just as seems to have happened here.”
“So, you don’t want to resolve your mother’s estate with a mediator in a legal way?”
“Now George, that’s not what I said. I just called to apologize. I’m really sorry that our phone call got so heated.”
“I think you know exactly what you are doing . . . I have to go. Bye now.”
“George, no, really . . .”
But he had hung up.
Lifelong family friends, poof, gone. I blame my sister for putting George up to that phone call. I seethed as the maelstrom boiled and bubbled with yet another loss. The whirlpool whipped into a frenzy.
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Feel free to let me know what you think about this snippet from my memoir.
Also, let me know what you think about writing about friends and family in memoir-type writing? Should you use names or not? Should it matter? If you’re telling your truth, is it still libelous?
Next week, we’ll return to the subject of T.S. Eliot, and the echoes of Eliot throughout my memoir.
Stay safe out there and enjoy your weekend!
Until then, I’ll . . .
Just keep writing!
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