Straying from the ‘distorted truth’ versions of lies that we observed in class, I tried to concoct an outright lie for the assignment ‘your history.’ However, I had a hard time doing this, mostly because of how unconvinced I was of my own lies. Most of them sounded absurd in my head and I would just scratch them off, convinced that “No one is going to buy THAT,” or “There’s no way I’ll be able to say this with a straight face.” It took me a while to reason that the audience this was intended for barely knew me. I realized it would be easy to make something up about my life back in Nepal because I suspected anyone in my class knew much about this land so isolated from the US, both physically and culturally. I decided to make up a story about my family owning a guesthouse on the trail up to Mount Everest. I actually knew very little about the trail and when I started reading my notes out loud to the class, I felt completely transparent. So, I was immensely surprised when I saw that most of the class had bought my lie.
This made me think about how the efficacy of lie hinges not only upon the author but also upon the audience. I know that if I’d spun such a story back in Nepal, it would be an utter failure. My appearance would be dead giveaway to begin with, but in a country halfway across the globe, the fact that those high altitudes of Nepal are inhabited by indigenous groups of people called Sherpas is no common knowledge. Similarly, only a few years back I would have blindly believed a nice old man if he’d said “I was born and raised in New York,” in a deep Southern accent.
I read Dan Brown’s novel ‘The Da Vinci Code’ some time back during its yielding days of heightened controversy. The book tweaks some deeply ingrained beliefs of Christianity and although it is a work of fiction, historical facts have been used to prop up the plot. I have always been drawn to mystery novels and this book made me awestruck. It was befuddling because of how Brown meshed what he claimed to be fact with pure fiction. Even when the book ended, all the puzzles fit into place and Brown had laid out all that he had to say, I was left wondering what I was supposed to believe. I was tempted to believe most of it and even share my newfound knowledge with whoever was willing to pay heed. Brought up in a largely Hindu community, I was oblivious to many facts of Christianity. Regardless, I am pretty confident the book was able to puzzle people of a more Christian background too. It wasn’t until I came across some documentaries and readings on the Internet by religious scholars that I came to know that most seemingly factual information in the book were inaccurate. In some way, this made me admire the author even more because of how astute he was in convincing his readers of his lies. In fact I became an ardent fan, and went on to read his other works. I was drawn by how the revelations in the end always took me off guard. However, by the fourth book I think, he had become almost predictable. It reminded me of the time when I obsessively read Sidney Sheldon mystery novels until I reached the point when I could foresee the end by putting together some elements I knew he always used to manipulate the reader.
So, I guess you really can’t fool all the people all the time and at the receiving end, it all comes down to how well you can resonate with your "liar."
I'm a huge Dan Brown fan and completely believed his historical fiction as well. I was surprised that the pieces hadn't been put together sooner and thought he was a genius for discovering an ultimate truth. I was only able to think this way because I did not know enough about religion to catch Brown in his lies. I think you are absolutely right that our “audience,” and their knowledge, affects their believability in a lie. There were many truths that I considered sharing with the class for my history, but refrained from using because there are certain students in the class who already know them and would catch my lie.
ReplyDeleteSo, part of believing a lie is in not knowing the truth, but it also lies in the “audience’s” desire to knowingly go along with a lie. Although I knew that Brown would use false historical facts in his other novels, I read them all and was equally captivated because I love his storytelling. Therefore, I let myself believe his lies for the sake of the overall story.
In this response, I love the way you tied in the “my history” class assignment with an analysis of the relationship between author and audience, and with a cultural reference to “The Da Vinci Code.” I completely relate to your struggle in attempting to design a lie to present to the class. Similarly, I pictured myself reading stories aloud, discarding those that sounded forced, or others I couldn’t say seriously. However, unlike you I eventually selected one at random hoping for the best. But your acute consideration of the intended audience was a much better approach, something that I wish I had thought of, and most likely the reason so many peers believed your fabrication.
ReplyDeleteI find your transition from discussing the class assignment to analyzing the relationship between author and audience to be very well done. The comparison between telling your story to a group of strangers in New York State, to telling it to natives of Nepal explained your point very well: that authors have an intended audience, and must be very conscious of that audience in order to properly convey information, or in this case a believable story. Your response also prompts me to consider: when reading a story, am I automatically part of the intended audience, or can there be some outlying readers that the author would not consider a part of the intended audience? And if there are such outliers, are they the readers who expose the author for misleading or completely lying to the audience as Bierce did in his story?
Your final line that includes “you can’t fool all the people all the time” reminds me of a quote of Abraham Lincoln’s: “you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” This seems extremely relevant to your post, that depending on the author, and depending on the audience, any story can be true to the extent that the audience believes it.