Narrative as Weapon, Narrative as Poison, and “Getting it Right”—Chernobyl
By David Corbett | June 14, 2019 |
Chernobyl by Dmytro Syvvi
This is one of those posts that begins by telling you what I intended to write, why I decided not to write that, and how it led me to what you’ll read below.
I will be in Ireland when this post goes up (meaning I won’t be available for comments—sorry), and what I wanted to write was a sort of paeon to the incredible outpouring of great Irish writing going on right now, especially in the north.
Adrian McKinty, Belfast-born and one of my favorite novelists, is currently working on a piece featuring only the new crop of northern Irish writers, and he’s finding that task alone daunting. On Twitter, he remarked: “Someone needs to do a PhD thesis on this. Civil war + peace + a generation = cultural boom?”
And that’s just the north. Even if you narrow it down to the “Celtic Dawn” in crime fiction, you quickly find yourself overwhelmed. Brian Cliff’s Irish Crime Fiction surveys the terrain masterfully, but it’s a lot of terrain.
So I found myself faced with the prospect of doing the job well, meaning a great deal more immersion than I can currently justify given other obligations, or simply refer to the writers I know or have read and admire, which would seem to give the whole topic short shrift. So I began to think I should wait, do more research, and approach the subject with the breadth and depth it deserves.
I was in the middle of this conundrum when two of the Irish writers I intended to feature in my original piece, Adrian and Steve Cavanagh (another wonderful novelist from Belfast), got into a lusty back and forth on Twitter over a critique in the New Yorker of the HBO miniseries Chernobyl.
The critique was written by Masha Gessen, a Russian emigre who has written expansively and insightfully about the Soviet Union and present-day Russia. I have to admit to being a bit of a fan, and I make a point of reading anything that crosses the virtual transom bearing her byline. So I was predisposed to take her perspective to heart.
Though giving the show credit for attention to detail, Gessen faulted it for using certain storytelling techniques, which she derided as the “outlines of a disaster movie,” to attempt to tell the truth about a situation that defies easy fictional portrayal.
The result, to her mind, often veered between “caricature and folly.” Her chief complaint was in the way the show attributed agency to individuals in a system that crushed individual initiative. She conceded that the resignation typifying Soviet life was “depressing and untelegenic,” and that the conflict necessary for a compelling fictionalization would by necessity falsify a world where “confrontation was unthinkable. But in ginning up such agency and confrontation, the show “cross[ed] the line from conjuring a fiction to creating a lie.”
“It would be harder to show a system digging its own grave instead of an ambitious, evil man causing the disaster. In the same way, it’s harder to see dozens of scientists looking for clues when you can just create a single fantasy character who will have all the good disaster-fighting traits.”
I find this an interesting problem as a writer. How do you craft a compelling story when there is no stand-out individual to play the role of protagonist or antagonist; instead, there is an insidious system so soul-crushing and steeped in false narratives that disaster becomes inevitable? There are no guilty parties, only scapegoats. No heroes, just survivors.
To be brief, Adrian wasn’t having it. He’s the only one of the three to have actually watched all five episodes, and he considered it “excellent TV.” Steve stood with Adrian on general principles: “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.”
Fur flew. Mostly mine. (Or, as Adrian so artfully put it, “You brought a dictionary to a knife fight, Davey.” To which I responded, “Give me a minute while I look up ‘knife fight.’”)
I tried to point out that David Simon’s various shows, from The Wire to Treme to The Deuce, all portrayed cities or parts of cities—systems—with no single protagonist at the helm of the drama but a whole group of individuals working in concert or at cross-purposes, often both. To my mind, they did so brilliantly. Could this perhaps point the way to a fictionalization that would have appeased at least some of Gessen’s concerns?
Adrian remained unmoved. He still found little if anything to fault in the way Chernobyl portrayed its material, and instead remarked in his inimitable fashion:
“If you want drama & excitement & good acting you should watch it. If you want a delineation of why a structuralist approach better serves to capture certain facets of totalitarian regimes in crisis, it won’t be your thing.”
But my brain still itched. I’ve written one book on character with another coming out later this year, and I sometimes find myself wondering if our Western view of storytelling, with a key individual at the center, doesn’t fundamentally distort the truth in a significant way.
It turns out, Chernobyl’s showrunner, Craig Mazin, had exactly the same concerns, as well as the same issues surrounding verisimilitude raised by Gessen. And in an interview he addressed both points in an incredibly interesting, comprehensive, and satisfying way. (Seriously, I cannot recommend this interview highly enough, especially for anyone interested in the difficulties of fictionalizing real events.)
For those who don’t know of Mazin, he was previously most famous for having directed the two sequels to the comedy Hangover. It’s therefore interesting to learn how he made the leap from comedy to drama.
He made two key observations on this point:
- Both comedy and drama only work if they focus on what’s true.
- Comedy is way harder than drama.
But what I found particularly fascinating was his discussion of how narrative cannot help but distort what it seeks to portray, and what that means when you’re telling a story based on real events. Does a ripping yarn really absolve the writer’s responsibility to the truth?
It turns out he thought about this long and hard before and during his writing of the script for Chernobyl—especially because he likens humanity’s plight right now given the climate crisis to the technicians working at the reactor.
“Right now, like it or not, we’re unfortunately those guys in the control room going, ‘Well, the one thing we don’t have to worry about is this thing blowing up.’ That’s us, on this planet, right now.”
He takes particular note of the use of narrative in advertising—commercials don’t sell products, they sell stories—and notes that “politics is weaponized narrative,” to the point where:
“Everything is a narrative. And we’re suffering. We’re kind of drowning in narrative poison”
And he recognizes the danger in that—the danger in mistaking stories for the truth and the responsibility of writers to never lose track of that when writing.
In particular, he knew how the Soviet system was awash in contrived narrative, and I think he’d agree with this observation by Gessen:
“The Soviet system of propaganda and censorship existed not so much for the purpose of spreading a particular message as for the purpose of making learning impossible, replacing facts with mush, and handing the faceless state a monopoly on defining an ever-shifting reality.”
He therefore became obsessed with recognizing where he made deliberate choices that distorted the known truth for the sake of dramatic effect—so much so that he decided to create a podcast to accompany the miniseries to point out the distortions and to provide the factual record to the best of his ability.
“The last thing I ever wanted to say to people was, ‘Now that you’ve watched this, you know the truth.’ No, you don’t. You know some of the truth, and you know some of the stuff that’s been dramatized.
“And ideally, through this, we start to maybe find a new way to present things to people where we’re not so worried as artists that people are going to question whether or not we, quote-unquote, ‘got it right.’ We can’t get it right; we can only get it sort of right. That’s the best we can do.
But if we can share everything else, including things that challenge or undermine the narrative we presented — because we are dealing with an imperfect process that boils two years down into five hours — then I think they will appreciate what we do more, not less.”
I find this incredibly refreshing, and a great response to Gessen’s criticisms. Mazin acknowledges that the fictional portrayal was a lie—but he also makes the very valid point that narrative by its very nature falsifies.
This is no minor point. One hears often that story is essential in making sense of our lives—and yet how can we make sense of our lives by telling ourselves things we know cannot be true?
Mazin points to an answer, and I don’t mean supplying a parallel podcast for each of our stories based on real or historical events (if only that were possible). By recognizing both the compelling nature of story and the danger it presents precisely because of that power—especially at a time when the weaponized narratives of politics seem ever closer to replacing facts with mush—we may be able to accept responsibility both for the truth we seek and the truth we’re obliged to shade or ignore to draw readers and audiences to our stories.
Camus famously remarked, “Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.” And Tim O’Brien, whose “How to Tell a True War Story” should be required reading for anyone who intends to put words on a page (I read it aloud last night to the guys in my prison class), has commented that the purpose of fiction is “getting at the truth when the truth isn’t sufficient for the truth.”
The proper attitude for such an effort is humility. As though, with each of our stories, we should add a warning label: “CAUTION: This may move you profoundly, but don’t be fooled.”
As I said, I’ll be away when this post comes up, so feel free to comment among yourselves—you’re a pretty savvy group. And don’t forget to look up both Adrian McKinty, whose forthcoming novel The Chain is getting universally spectacular reviews, and Steve Cavanagh, who’s not only an award-winning author but an internationally best-selling one. They’re exceptional wordsmiths, and Steve will be joining us for the Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference in August.
David Corbett (he/him) is the author of seven novels: The Devil’s Redhead, Done for a Dime (a New York Times Notable Book), Blood of Paradise (nominated for numerous awards, including the Edgar, Do They Know I’m Running?, The Mercy of the Night, The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday, and The Truth Against the World. He has also published the story collection Thirteen Confessions and the novella The Devil Prayed and Darkness Fell.
David’s short fiction and poetry have appeared in a broad array of magazines and anthologies, with pieces twice selected for Best American Mystery Stories.
His non-fiction has appeared in numerous venues, including the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Narrative, Zyzzyva, MovieMaker, The Writer, and Writer’s Digest.
He has taught both online and in classroom settings through the UCLA Extension’s Writers’ Program, Book Passage, LitReactor, 826 Valencia, The Grotto in San Francisco, and at numerous writing conferences across the US, Canada, and Mexico. In January 2013 Penguin published his textbook on the craft of characterization, The Art of Character (“A writer’s bible that will lead to your character’s soul.” —Elizabeth Brundage), and Writer’s Digest published his follow-up, The Compass of Character, in October 2019.
Fiction is fiction, but contains truth.
To lie means to falsify, deny, twist, distort or misrepresent in order to create an alternate to the truth or a reversal of it.
Is fiction supposed to “get it right”? It is supposed to creat verisimilitude, yes, the appearance of convincing reality. That way we suspend disbelief for a time and open ourselves to the story’s characters and point.
A system is not a character, but a system can be embodied in a character. And after all aren’t systems in reality only the collective actions (or failures to act) of actual human beings?
Fiction tells the truth in a heightened, dramatic way. It isolates what is wrong and instead of saying no one is at fault, turns the fault, and the solution, into the actions of single characters.
Which is exactly right, because what is wrong and what is good are, in truth, the actions of each of us. We are the system.
Thus, stories get it right. QED.
Hey David – My first thought after finishing this brilliant piece was to thank you for challenging us. You always ask us to stretch, which is critical for the gig.
Which led me to challenge myself in regard to considering the differences between narrative and “the truth.” I agree that we’re awash in narrative these days. My dog does this thing while she’s playing along the Lake Michigan shore. When she’s thirsty, she simply opens her mouth and wades along the shore, letting the water flow in. If lake-water was narrative, it’s what I think all too many of us are willing to do–so simple, so quenching. It’s like, say, listening to two oft-repeated but easily-refuted sentences rather than reading a damning 400-page report.
And by thinking about how you challenge us, I thought about how I feel like I come to my truths through being challenged. And the primary vehicle for challenging myself–truly looking into my soul and weighing things to their bare essence–has been long-form fiction. It’s part of what we’re missing today, I think. Too many of us simply splashing along the shore with our mouths open, scooping in the quenching narrative so amply supplied. Not to excuse myself or anyone else, or make this an “us and them” thing–we all need to continue to challenge ourselves.
You’ve got some wonderful quotes here, to which I’ll add:
“In times of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” And, “Objective truth is fading from the world.”–both George Orwell
“There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.”–Ray Bradbury
And finally (and quite fittingly, IMO), “Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
To say “have a great time in Ireland” would be a redundancy. So instead I’ll say that I hope you get a chance to do the Black Cabs tour in Belfast. It’s one of the most challenging and enlightening things I’ve ever done while traveling.
Thanks for the challenge, and for helping us to see how we beat our dragons and get to our truths.
Wonderful quotes, Vaughn, and I love your quenching metaphor. Alas, the lake has been poisoned (or we could also call it the well of discourse from which we all drink in order to survive). These days I often wonder how long it will take before people realize they’ve been poisoned. Or will many die never realizing? That seems even worse.
OK, to avoid utter gloominess maybe we can say that the realities of human existence won’t be denied forever. I am thinking of another 1984 reference: the prole woman who takes care of babies and goes on day after day hanging the laundry. Maybe she and people like her can preserve a kernel of sanity.
Thank you for this insightful post, David, and for discussing an issue that has concerned me for some time.
As a memoirist, I’ve had to do a lot of soul-searching about the way narrative twists real events. Yes, our untrustworthy memories already do that, but in addition, our selection of events and of details make us inevitably present our own version of events. My compromise has been to search for the emotional truth as I understand it.
On the other hand, the proliferation of docudramas and books based on real events, some more faithful than others but all distorted to some extent, scares me. How many viewers look further? How many readers of a novel, such as Euphoria by Lily King which fictionalised part of Margaret Mead’s life and completely changed some events, will do the research for themselves that would correct the deliberate inaccuracies?
And this is not a new problem. How much did the film Birth of a Nation’s misrepresentations of black men and of the KKK affect public opinion?
Schools in the US, concentrating on STEM, have downplayed the teaching of history (and other humanities); I’m often shocked by the lack of historical knowledge in recent graduates. This leaves many people without the background knowledge to assess the accuracy of the narratives they absorb.
At the same time, I sympathise with those who say that docudramas and based-on-real-events books at least spread some information. I don’t have an answer. It’s an issue I mull over. I like Craig Mazin’s attempts to correct inaccuracies with his interview and podcast. I wonder how many viewers of the show will explore them.
My Uncle Mike recently retired as a VP for Bechtel, and spent most of his career in nuclear cleanup. He has a great story of going into the control room at Chernobyl, but also has interesting stories from the Hanford site in Washington state. I know the writers of the miniseries are equating their narrative with global warming (which is catastrophic in its own right), but I think a reminder of the dangers of nuclear power and weapons in themselves is equally important.
I highly recommend the nonfiction book Command and Control by Eric Schlosser which explores accidents that the US has had with its nuclear arsenal.
Thank you for a great post!! I love what Mazin has to say about “getting it right.” As an author of historical fiction, I take the footnotes of history and embroider fictional characters and tales around them. Getting the balance between fact and fiction right is a constant concern for me. How much damage to readers’ understandings of very real events may result in falling too much on the side of fictional creation? How dry will the story become if only the true reality is presented? It is indeed refreshing, as another commenter stated, to read that we can never truly get it right. I think most authors have always known that, but it is reassuring that we are not alone in that knowledge. The best we can hope for is to present a view of the truth and hope that it communicates our intended meaning to the reader.
Is it the job of fiction to tell the truth? I’m not sure. I think fiction uses fabricated characters, events, and situations that taken together illuminate a LARGER TRUTH.
You mentioned THE WIRE. Did a cop named Jimmy McNulty really live or was that character a composite of attitudes and behaviors that helped tell the bigger story. The same for Stringer Bell or Bodie or Prop Joe or Bunk or Cedric Daniels or Lester Freamon.
None of them are real or true in a literal sense, but together (with other wonderful characters) represent an agency and illuminate the real truth of The Wire. A truth that is spoken over and over again by many characters. The LARGER TRUTH is “The game is the game”. All of us play our game. If we die, someone takes our place and the game goes on.
For me, that is storytelling.
Why would writers limit themselves to what some see as the truth?Whose truth?
And then there was Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter. I’ll leave it to others to find the truth of that one.
Actually, quite a few of the characters on The Wire (best show ever!) were based on real people, as were some of the storylines, adding an extra layer of interest for Baltimoreans. I don’t disagree with your point, though. Fiction that doesn’t pretend to represent real people or events can tell a larger truth. That’s a major reason I read and write it.
David–thank you once more for giving us true food for thought. I have no familiarity with any of the material you refer to, but what comes to mind are Shakespeare’s plays.
Specialists may decry Shakespeare’s dynastic biases in his English history plays, but for most, history for the periods in question has been shaped by those plays. Is this good or not? I don’t know. But I’m sure human character as dramatized in his plays–comedy, history, tragedy, historical/comical/tragical–is “true,” even though Shakespeare often “plays” fast and loose with historical fact.
As for recent history, I can appreciate how someone close to actual events would resent incomplete or simplified treatment. But one might think in terms of the Mueller Report. Almost no one has or will read it. But put the principles on TV, and that drama will take up residence in people’s minds and imaginations.
As writers, and therefore readers, we understand that truth often dresses up in fiction to reveal itself. What’s chilling is, as Masha Gessen wrote and Vaughn seconded, any system that so manipulates a narrative as to encourage people to swallow its story whole-hog, to not even consider the that some of it may be untrue, much less know how to discern the truth from the fiction. As writers, we have the power, and even the duty, to use fiction to show that people, institutions, political systems, etc, are never purely good or evil, always right or always wrong; and to empower readers to discern the good from the evil, the right from the wrong, for themselves.