The Ethics of Nonfiction, Part 1: “Triangulating”

I was once hired for a research project.

After I handed in my first draft—over 600 pages—I learned that the people who hired me did not want a rather straight “History,” or a chronicle filled with facts and scholarly analyses. Rather, they wanted a “popular history” or a “narrative non-fiction.” 

Basically, they wanted more drama; a movie in text. 

I had to cut so much.

As a kind of retribution, in my next draft, I decided to fill the book with recreations of the most exciting moments in my subject’s life. To do so, I planned to write the book in scenes. This style—pioneered by the “New Journalists” in the 1960s like Truman Capote, Tom Wolfe, and Johnny Depp’s hermitic-friend Hunter Thompson—is, incidentally, how most long-form magazine articles are written today.

In other words, I said, “Not a problem. I got you.”

Basically, they wanted more drama; a movie in text. 

As I set about doing this, I found it a far more difficult task than I had originally imagined. The problem was, I couldn’t just lie. Or, to put this more diplomatically, since this was nonfiction, capital-H History, I couldn’t just make it up. 

So, I developed a system that I likened to “triangulation,” which in the words of Wikipedia is, “the process of determining the location of a point by forming triangles to the point from known points.” In my case, this was a process of determining a moment in the past, achieved by stitching together the bits and pieces of the sources available to me. 

One such scene involved the main character going to a racially-charged political meeting in the American South long in the early 50s, before the turbulent final years of Jim Crow. 

I learned of the event from the main character’s own recollections; she had described the meeting as one of the most disturbing events of her young life. I remember my fascination was piqued by this particular reminiscence. 

She, a young privileged White woman, apparently hadn’t realized that other White people in her small Southern city did not want Black people joining the government. Considering what she would become, this moment was a major “awakening” for her. 

***

The problem was that her own account of the event, which contained the outlines of a tantalizing drama, was woefully brief. The sum total of what I knew of the meeting spanned a grand total of 25-ish lines in the transcription of her recollections. 

But I was stuck on it; I knew there was more to this story. Furthermore, I instinctively knew this event was meant to be an important stand-alone chapter in the book. 

Thus, the question became: how to turn these lines into pages?

So, I started to dig. I began with the easiest tasks first. She mentioned that the meeting in question was a local one, so it was not too difficult to search where those meetings took place. I also knew that the building where the old meetings had taken place was still standing; I drove past it countless nights, once creeping slowly through a flood in my Toyota Prius, hoping that the water didn’t drown the catalytic converter. 

The erstwhile Forest Hills Clubhouse—now the neighborhood library—was unmistakable for what it was.  

In her memories, the main character mentioned a few names of the local Civil Rights leaders, who had asked her to join them in standing for local election. She also said the name of their opposition, William Umstead. Being the polite Southern woman that she was, she did not call this man a racist, which he undoubtedly was. 

Neither did she mention that this man was, at the time, elected to and holding a powerful national office: Senator of the State of North Carolina. This juicy nugget of information was readily found by another internet search. 

Suitably electrified, I cross referenced this man’s name in my notes and found that he was not only an old family friend of the main character’s, but that he was also one of her family’s lawyers. 

The context was growing. 

As I began to understand that this was no ordinary meeting, I deduced from the way that she told the story that this event was a kind of “awakening for her,” that she was rather innocent of what was occurring in the city, of the hornet’s nest she was about to walk into. 

From the notes I had taken from her personal correspondence, I knew a litany of personal issues were preoccupying her at that time. While there was no way to know what was precisely on her mind as she entered the meeting, this did give me some insight as to the problems that were bothering her at the time. 

Of course, it is possible that she was over-stating her own naïveté. And the biographer or historian always must consider how memories change over time, and to take them with a grain of salt, or a measure of skepticism. Indeed, she gave these recollections roughly 50 years after the meeting took place. But while her personality might be such to underplay her role in certain events, she was also not one to lie. 

More generally, I find that, absent any direct evidence to the contrary, it’s best to take people at their word.

I had enough to start filling out the scene. But I needed more to take it to the next level. In short, I needed physical details, to make the reader feel that they were inside that meeting. As I mentioned, the building where the meeting took place was still standing, so I literally went to visit it to get a sense of the space. Then, I had photographs of her from the time, and I knew where she liked to shop, so I could describe her appearance with some accuracy. I knew the model of the car she drove the short way over.

So, I wrote the scene. And it was fine; it was very good even. But there was one aspect of the scene that bothered me. As I mentioned, the main character’s personality tended to avoid conflict. Like others of her “the Greatest” generation, I’ve found, she did not like to revel in any details that might smack of impolitically correct. As she had it, there were “very hot words” at the meeting, that got “very heated,” so much so that the Black people (and the White people who supported them, including the main character) moved to one side of the room, while the racist larger group of White people stood on the other. The following is typical of her avoidance that I just described. 

“I can't remember exactly what was said, but the old-line people essentially were telling the blacks to stay in their place. If there had been a race riot I would not have been surprised.”

Of course, her brevity, or her circumcision, or tact, or reticence, or desire to avoid controversy was a problem. From the many accounts of separate incidents from that time period I had read or watched, I had a sense of the kind of disgusting language that might have been employed at that meeting. But, on the other hand, I didn’t know precisely what was said or done. (And there was no way of knowing; everyone that I knew of who had attended that meeting was now dead, even the “young” people. The specific details of this chapter are lost to History.) 

I was in an ethical bind. Do I give an account of what I think was said and done, and thus try to capture the spirit of the scene; or do I stay on unimpeachably solid ground and quote the main character’s slightly flat, yet still interesting, recollection?

I was in an ethical bind. Do I give an account of what I think was said and done, and thus try to capture the spirit of the scene; or do I stay on unimpeachably solid ground and quote the main character’s slightly flat, yet still interesting, recollection?

In the end, I decided to write an account of what I think occurred. I felt confident I could defend my writing to anyone who might take issue with it. I had taken measures to prove to the reader that this was a recreation and that anyway, this was poetic license. 

For instance, I was careful not to place anything in quotations that I wasn’t positive had been said, or hadn’t come from either the main character’s recollections, or those of a political friend of hers from that time period who I had interviewed at a nearby old-folk’s home. Furthermore, I felt that the issue was important enough to use the aggressive and offensive language. I explained this to my editor and he agreed. 

Not so long ago, I encountered a version of this in my editing practice. But that’s a story for next week.