Reflections on Truth-Telling

The author of The Glass Castle started her book from the perspective of a much younger version of herself. When you are that young it’s hard to remember everything that happens to you. The way she writes is very vivid and descriptive, like it’s happening right at this very minute. I think it would be hard to remember all of those details. There would be advantages to exaggerating or making things up. For one thing, it would be easier to fill in some of the blanks that time and denial help create. From the way she wrote about her later self it seems like she probably didn’t have any contact with her parents after she grew up. This would make asking them little things like the name of a place they lived a lot more difficult. It would also help to protect the identities of the people she mentions if she changed their names. Of course there would be some disadvantages to not having everything be truthful. The perspective that she writes from is very raw and seems to come from the heart somehow. This being despite the fact that a lot of the events she describes sound fantastic and unrealistic. If she were to embellish things I think that effect of truthfulness would be diminished. It’s likely that the combination of fantasy and the rawness of the writing is what draws a lot of people to the book. For many authors that combination might make the work sound false or incredibly unrealistic. The fact that she can get away with this is just as unlikely as the events in the book happening to most people who might read it. However, people might be able to relate to a little of her parents crazy or the need to travel. To be honest, however, I have no idea what’s true and what might not be.