Poynter Online
Go


Top Story

Public TV, Radio Stations to Increase Local Investigative Coverage
Most Recent Articles
1.Poynter's Times Publishing Co. sells Governing
5:15 PM Nov. 20, 2009
2.Recommendation for Fewer PAP Screens Sure to Set Off Controversy
10:32 AM Nov. 20, 2009
3.Gene Patterson to Jack Nelson: Save Us a Desk Up There in That Celestial Newsroom
7:03 AM Nov. 20, 2009
4.Public TV, Radio Stations to Increase Local Investigative Coverage
6:19 AM Nov. 20, 2009
5.Woods: Plagiarism Never Justified
3:47 PM Nov. 19, 2009
Most E-mailed
Recent Comments
Recent Tags
Community Activity

Poynter Training
Poynter Seminars
Small, in-person training experiences.
1.
A New Curriculum for a New Journalism - Jan. 6-8, 2010
Apply by November 23
2.
Multimedia Journalism for College Educators - February 1-5, 2010
Apply by December 14
3.
NewsU: Write Your Heart Out: The Craft of the Personal Essay - January 25-February 19, 2010
Apply by January 4
News University
Today's most popular courses on NewsU, Poynter's e-learning site for journalists.
Webinars
Our online classroom is just a click away. Learn more.
All Webinars

Poynter Forums

View Forum Post

Topic: Letters Sent to Romenesko
Date/Time: 3/28/2007 10:58:02 AM
Title: Zane's wrong about my reporting, says Heard
Posted By: Jim Romenesko
 
From ALEX HEARD: In his critique of my New Republic article about David Sedaris, J. Peder Zane of the Raleigh News and Observer seems to think I single-sourced my claim that Sedaris fabricated events and dialogue in such stories as "Dix Hill," "Go Carolina," "Giant Dreams, Midget Abilities," and "Naked," with the result that, for the most part, I shined a weak light on stories in which Sedaris's recollections merely differed from that of my source.

Sorry, but that's not how it worked. With each of those tales, I found multiple sources who made it clear that Sedaris had invented things entirely, in stories that were billed and sold as nonfiction. I then phoned Sedaris, who admitted to specific fabrications that I spelled out for him--with him unhappily confirming, for example, that he'd made up virtually everything about his midget guitar teacher, Mr. Mancini. So, in each instance, Sedaris himself was the second source, but he didn't fess up just to be accommodating.

Would Sedaris have shared the same information if I'd called him first? I don't know, but I decided I'd be wise to have a few answers before asking the questions. As Zane and I both noted, Sedaris had told many interviewers over the years that he "exaggerates." But Zane missed the point that Sedaris never went into deep detail about what he meant by that. I wanted to know, so I did my homework before approaching him.

Zane also ridicules the idea that these few stories were the only ones in which I found fabricated events and dialogue. In fact, there were several others, but these examples illustrated every point I needed to make, so I gave Sedaris a break and didn't laundry-list all the fibs. Echoing Peter Carlson, who bleated about the article in The Washington Post, he also opined that none of it mattered anyway, because Sedaris is a humorist, so he gets a special pass to make things up. "We're all in on the joke," Zane wrote.

I don't buy that. Carlson cited James Thurber and Garrison Keillor, who (I guess he forgot) are best-known for writing funny fiction inspired by real events. Sedaris chose to call his work nonfiction and repeatedly assured interviewers that everything in his stories was true. Even so, at times he allowed himself the use of every fictional tool in the bag to make his stories better. That's a wonderful device to have at your disposal. Unfortunately, all the funny nonfiction writers I know would be fired if they were caught using it.

The distortions that resulted weren't trivial. Sedaris took a real person --George Sage -- and turned him into a clownish stereotype. He claimed that an elementary school in Raleigh set up a program cynically designed to identify and cure young homosexuals by erasing their lisps. And he depicted a state mental hospital as being so out-of-control that a tiny seventh grader could waltz in and, within minutes, find himself working with violent patients. Does any of this matter? It did to the sources I found. Without exception, they were offended by what Sedaris wrote.

Finally, it doesn't wash to say that "everybody knows" Sedaris exaggerates, so they know when he's stretching the truth for laughs. Zane sure didn't. He read the Mancini story and, as he'd made clear in an earlier News and Observer essay extolling Sedaris's work, he swallowed the idea that Mancini victimized young David with a preposterous-sounding act of homophobia that, in fact, never happened.

Zane found it laughable that I did so much reporting to understand the boundary between fact and fiction in Sedaris's work. But reporting has its virtues. If he'd picked up the phone even once, he might have avoided this pathetic mistake. [Permalink]

View Complete Forum Topic

Username
Password
New User? Signup Now
Poynter Careers
See All Jobs
Add Your Resume
Post Your Job
Become a Member
More media jobs