Those were four of the things I learned yesterday.  The first three came courtesy my newspaper.  The last one was mentioned in a lecture I heard last night at a local university.
     Yes, I've actually had another out-of-house experience.  I even managed to sit for an hour in the middle of a packed auditorium without suffering a single anxiety attack.  I think it helped that I was about 20 years older than the average person there, and not in danger of flunking a class if I got up and walked out.  Whatever the exact causes, I ended up feeling closer than ever before to being that totally unnoticed fly on the wall I've wanted to be all my life.... 

     The guest lecturer was Ursula Hegi.  I'd never heard of Ursula Hegi before yesterday but a lot of others apparently have.  Her novel, Stones from the River, was Oprah's book of the month back in March, 1997.  She's written more than a hundred articles for such things as the New York Times Book Review.  She's taught creative writing at Eastern Washington University since 1984.  I'm not sure what made her decide to spend a Tuesday evening in Ohio after all that, but I figured that if she was foolish enough to do so, I was foolish enough to go listen to whatever she had to say, even if our fair state had reduced her to silent screaming.
     Turns out she did considerably better than that.

     The topic Ms. Hegi chose to speak on was "Research and Novel Writing."  She was a good speaker, calm and confident for the entire time she was seated behind a single small table in the center of the stage, her only companion a water glass, her slight German accent only adding to her natural charm.  Although she had evidently typed out everything she was going to say beforehand, I got the sense that she really need not have bothered.
     Alas, Hans was not nearly as impressed with her as I was....

     Hans, of course, is my imaginary overeducated and underemployed European friend.  Like most members of the post-modern avant garde, he has very strong opinions on writing, fiction, and most everything else.  No matter what Ms. Hegi had to say, no matter how well she said it, Hans was there in my ear with an impolite objection.  Bothersome, to say the least, but when one decides to bring an imaginary overeducated and underemployed European friend into one's life, one gets exactly what one deserves.

     Ms. Hegi stressed several main points.  First and foremost was her belief that novel writers must get their facts right.  Getting a fact wrong does violence to the special bond of trust which exists between writer and reader, and that's bad - very, very bad.  Consequently, she does an immense amount of research before she writes.  If she has a character flying from Nantucket to New York, she calls up the airlines and asks about times and planes and prices and everything else short of the likelihood of the pilot's having stepped on gum sometime during the month before take-off.  If she has a scene with a grease fire in it, she calls up the fire department and cross examines the fire chief about the best ways to start one.  It was in the course of doing the research for Stones from the River - a novel which details what life was like in Germany between 1915 and 1952 - that she discovered that those yellow stars frayed easily and often.... 

     "This is such bullshit!" Hans yelled in my ear.  "All fiction is bullshit!  That's why they call it fiction - right?  If she's so into Truth, why doesn't she write non-fiction??"
     I squirmed uncomfortably.  A quick glance revealed that his yelling had failed to disturb the sleep of the students around us, but that did little to relieve me of the knowledge that this was only the beginning.  Past experience told me that any time he started off in that tone of voice, the end of his rant was days away....
     "Suppose the stars had been made of cotton?  Would that have made the Holocaust any more understandable?  If we want to reduce racial hatred in America today, should we ban synthetic patches??"
     I politely and calmly pointed out to my friend that Ms. Hegi was merely trying to be authentic - certainly a respectable goal of any writer.
     "But it's trivial!" Hans asserted.  "Here she is, demanding that writers get the fabrics of their historical characters right, while completely overlooking the basic inauthenticity of all writing.  All writing is just words on paper, you know?  Black ink on white paper, most often.  And in what sense can black ink on white paper ever really capture what it was like to be in Nazi Germany?  At best it's an illusion, and it's a dangerous illusion if you don't even know it's an illusion!"
     Just because writing isn't the same thing as living doesn't mean it doesn't have value, I replied.  And it doesn't mean that a writer can write whatever he or she wants to with utter disregard for reality.
     "And what's the value of accurately describing how to start a good grease fire, huh?  What's the value of knowing that a certain hideous description of a fire victim's burnt flesh is as accurate as an interview with medical professionals can make it?  If that's what makes writing 'authentic', I'll take inauthentic writing any day, thank you very much."
     But inauthentic writers don't deserve our trust.
     "No writer deserves our trust!" Hans almost wailed.  "First, because of all the limits and distortions inherent in any writing whatsoever.  Second, because even the best and most conscientious writers might unknowingly be using inaccurate sources.  Third, because we're separated from even conscientious, accurate writers by editors, typesetters, printers, and who knows who else, and unintentional and intentional errors can creep in every step of the way.  Fourth, because in the case of fiction writers like Ms. Hegi, the need to tell an engaging story about engaging characters trumps everything else and inevitably distorts true facts like funhouse mirrors.  Otherwise she'd be writing so-called non-fiction, right?  Fifth - "
     Enough, enough!  I'd like to hear what she's saying about how awful it is when the bond of trust between writer and reader is broken, if you don't mind.
     "But that's a bond that should be broken!" Hans declared flatly.  "What do we mean by that word 'trust'?  Do we mean that we may turn our minds off now and blindly accept whatever author X is feeding us without having to worry about its accuracy?  Well, life isn't like that.  Life is about learning to live in a world of tentative conclusions and assumptions that are always doubtful and problematic and always open to revision.  The trust that she's talking about sounds more like what got the Germans into trouble with Hitler in the first place rather than a proper medicine for that trouble."
     I hardly think it proper to say that a well-intentioned humanistic novel writer is uncomfortably similar to the supporters of the Nazis.
     "All I know is one can't trust people blindly, whoever they are," Hans stood his ground.  "Writers, Nazis, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Swaggart....  Forget what I say at your own risk."
     So, all writers and writing is untrustworthy shit?  And we shouldn't read any of it?  Is that what you're saying, O Wise One?
     "No, what I'm saying is Truth is a very tenuous thing, and if you're gonna base the quality of your writing on the quality of the Truth it contains, you're fucking yourself at square one.  The best you can do is say, 'Here's a small part of reality as I see it.'  And then let the non-trivial truths emerge and be put to the test.  The fabrics the Nazis used, described truly or not, is trivial.  The non-trivial truths depend less on research than on logic.  If you need to go out and interview people before realizing that it's bad to throw people into ovens, you're in far more trouble than even I think you're in."
     Erm....
     "Look, take The Diary of Anne Frank, ok?  Suppose we found out somehow that it was an incredible hoax written by some old guy in New Jersey, circa 1953.  If that destroys its value to us as literature, well, what value did it ever really have as literature?  It's the same sequence of words in both cases, right?  But we don't read it as literature, really - we read it as an historical document, as evidence - and that's a completely different thing.  As evidence, its value is utterly dependent upon its context. 
     "There's a better kind of writing - a kind which transcends context with the strength of its argumentation or the ease with which its facts can be checked.  A book which logically and scientifically demolishes all the beliefs of the Nazis is going to last longer and in the end have more influence than a book which basically says, 'Please don't be like these people who were terribly mean to this one little girl.'  You know, people are mean to people all the time.  If they think that meanness is justified, they can even revel in it.  But if you point out that many white people have more genes in common with many black people than  they do with many other whites - if you detail exactly how modern science has rejected the very idea of race as a meaningful concept - well, how can meanness be self-righteously administered on the basis of race?" 
     So, when can I expect to read your book on the subject? I pointedly inquired of my know-it-all phantom friend.
     "Ah, my writing is of a third kind - neither historical document nor the literature of logic.  My writing seeks to escape reality rather than reflect it.  You want reality, put your damn books down and go poke your head out your window."
     Oooo, nice phrase!  Let me write that down....
     "Jesus, what a hopeless fool you are!  And to think I passed up the chance to be Oprah's imaginary friend for THIS gig!"