Persons Unfinished

[Teresa]

"Answered prayers cause more tears than those that remain unanswered."  Saint Teresa of Avila

 

Despite having a hideous name like Truman Streckfus Persons, born to parents called Lillie Mae and Carchulus, he could have had it all.

 

His mother later remarried, renamed her son Truman Garcia Capote, and I wonder if the name changed him, if he'd have been worse off with Persons, like Bill Clinton might have been as Bill Blythe or that nameless doctor in Hope, Arkansas a few claim was Bill's father; names tell their own story, which is why celebrities change them.

 

Truman was larger than life, an illusion that fattened his ego for the big kill, aided by a natural tendency to binge on alcohol and attention.

 

Friends saw the first few chapters of his final novel in Esquire and were friends no more.  They were written as characters thinly disguised as fictional, their deep dark secrets exposed.

 

Those few scathing chapters from his tell-all novel, Answered Prayers, ended the big life he'd always wanted long before the remainder of the novel was published posthumously, unfinished.     

[Angela]

Raises the main issue of writing for me.  All my characters have aspects which I think might be interpreted as ones belonging to people I know.  I don't see how to write completely outside of my experience with real people.  Maybe Truman was really just a storyteller and not a novelist.  Maybe I am a storyteller, too, more so than a writer.  This is not necessarily a bad thing.

You always give me so much to think about.

[Robert McEvily]

Great piece, and I love set-up quote.  Streckfus?  Really?  Ouch.

Anyone ever hear the rumor he's the real author of To Kill a Mockingbird? 

[Ron. Lavalette]

I'm 61; haven't yet found out what fiction is. Everything is eith conjecture or memoir. When people recognize themselves in my writing, I always have to disappoint them by telling them it's someone else. It happens all the time & I don't know why.

[Gita]

Is this an object lesson or warning to those who write memoirs?  If Truman's book had been about ordinary, small-town people with ordinary egos, I believe he would have been okay. His mistake was to write about people with fortunes and huge egos. Those are the types (to steal from Carley Simon) "who probably think this book is about you, don't you?" 

 

[Teresa]

You are right, Simon.  Fixed it.  I love this network.

[Simon Halliday]

I like this. I see the second sentence modified as the opening line - 'With a name like ...   ... should have had it all.

But nice.

[Mike Handley]

Good writers usually come with faulty brakes on their jaws.