Truth, lies, and lecture series.

TO THE EDITOR:

In his article "Lie, Memory" [Apr/May 2005], Paul Maliszewski spends most of his time retelling Michael Chabon's entertaining tales. He spends far less time explaining why these stories should in some way discredit Chabon.

When I attended Chabon's talk sponsored by Nextbook in Seattle, I knew I was watching a professional storyteller, known primarily for his award-winning short stories and novels, use a live performance to weave an entertaining tale about how writers use their imaginations to explore dark truths. I remember his timing, his smirks, his winks. I also recall Chabon's hyperbolic warm-up to a key point in the tale. It went something like, "I know that you won't believe me, but I assure you that all that I tell you is absolutely true." And then Chabon went on to describe how a lump of clay had come to life before his eyes. I knew that he did not expect me to believe him: I was to take all he said with a healthy dose of skepticism.

Why is Maliszewski trying to "expose" a professional storyteller for telling fictions?

--John Peterson

Palo Alto, CA

TO THE EDITOR:

After reading Paul Maliszewski's piece on Michael Chabon, I leapt to my computer and Googled "Chabon/Nextbook/Book of Hell/Adler/Colby," etc., sure that I would find evidence that Maliszewski's article was in on the joke--part of the larger performance, as it were. (The rather uninsightful "Either it's real or it's fiction" point of view does fit nicely into a Borgesian conspiracy.) Alas, it doesn't appear so. Chabon really does exist.

--Curtis Bonney

Seattle

TO THE EDITOR:

Kudos to Bookforum and Paul Maliszewski's investigation into Michael Chabon's "Holocaust Hoax." I cannot add anything more except to point out that there is a one-word explanation for Chabon's utter dishonesty: narcissism, which can be defined as a total disregard for the needs and concerns of others. Chabon is a young writer who won the Pulitzer while in his thirties; he clearly imagines that such an early accomplishment gives him license to manipulate the truth according to his own needs. In today's political climate, we need writers more committed to historical truth, not less.

--Stephen Bracco

Brooklyn, NY

TO THE EDITOR:

In his article "Lie, Memory," Paul Maliszewski describes me as a "skeptical, equivocal listener" to the performances Michael Chabon gave in Seattle, Washington, DC, and Fairfax, Virginia, last May, sponsored by Nextbook. Maliszewski treats my skepticism as either a character flaw or the slick response of a cagey spokesman: "If there was a base, Brogan moved quickly to cover it. He would not be fooled; he didn't seem to believe anything very strongly--or he believed everything somewhat loosely." In fact, my skepticism was a perfectly appropriate response to the style and content of Chabon's performance.

Chabon's talk was titled "Golems I Have Known, or, Why My Elder Son's Middle Name Is Napoleon." It begins: "I saw my first golem in 1968, in Flushing, New York, shortly before my fifth birthday." Chabon goes on to detail three encounters with these supernatural beings ("I saw the Golem of Flushing open its eyes"). He introduces these tales with an outlandish claim: "The truth is that golems are real, they are out there now, and they are everywhere." At the same time, he punctuates his story with insistent references to lies, liars, and lying, culminating in his final words: "And, naturally, I'm still telling lies." In other words, Chabon's talk exhibits all the hallmarks of a tall tale, with the author signaling to the audience at every turn that the narrator is not to be completely trusted.

Maliszewski prefers to ignore, minimize, or deliberately misread these signs in the hope of stirring up scandal. He tells us that "Chabon promised a real account," that "Chabon does make many broad claims about truth," that Chabon "was presenting ideas as facts," and that he presented his talk as "an authentic portrait of the artist." He even quotes Chabon's promise "to come forward now and come out with the truth" about the existence of golems to support his argument. This is like invoking Spinal Tap to indict the music industry. Similarly, he dismisses Chabon's repeated references to lying as "the fine print at the bottom of a contract." The truth is just the opposite. If anything, Chabon might be criticized for being too obvious in his winks and nods to the audience, but it is clear that he wanted them to share in the fun.

Maliszewski also wants to separate Chabon's fantastic stories about golems from his story about Joseph Adler, but he never mentions that the Adler episode is a story about a golem. Chabon tells his audience that he noticed a small, lumpy statue on his only visit to Adler's house, but when the Mayflower movers come to remove Adler's belongings, the statue has transformed itself into a giant (it had grown "as a lie grows"). Adler's own book, his Holocaust memoir/hoax (Chabon's story is even equivocal about this), also includes a story about a golem. At Theresienstadt, Adler claims, he traded two potatoes for a magic tablet said to have the power to reawaken the famous Golem of Prague, a tablet that miraculously finds its way into Chabon's hands later in the story. Now, some might object to the mixing of such fanciful tales with references to the Holocaust; others might take exception to fictional accounts of the Holocaust in general. But if this is Maliszewski's concern, why not tackle Chabon's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, rather than the unpublished text of a performance? Readers could then at least judge for themselves.

Maliszewski acknowledges that Chabon's talk follows a long literary tradition, but, as usual, he gets it wrong. He writes: "Chabon isn't just mixing fact and fiction, something all novelists do, going back at least as far as Daniel Defoe; he is creating a fictional memoir and presenting it as real." Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Journal of the Plague Year, and Moll Flanders are all fictions masquerading as memoirs, as are Gulliver's Travels, The Three Musketeers, and a long list of other classic works of fiction. It should be obvious that there is a vast gulf between these novels and Binjamin Wilkomirski's counterfeit Holocaust memoir, Fragments, and the works of other frauds or propagandists. These fiction writers are not looking to put one over on the public for personal or political gain; they are simply employing a familiar literary trope, in which the story includes a fiction of its own origins. And like Chabon's talk, these novels often upend their own claims of veracity with broad hints at their true fictional nature. They do so through fabulous tales--talking horses, golems in the basement--and through extravagant "truth claims." In a prefatory letter to Gulliver's Travels, for instance, the supposed author writes: "Do these miserable animals presume to think that I am so far degenerated as to defend my veracity? Yahoo as I am, it is well known through all Houyhnhnmland, that by the instructions and example of my illustrious master, I was able in the compass of two years (although I confess to the utmost difficulty) to remove that infernal habit of lying, shuffling, deceiving, and equivocating, so deeply rooted in the very souls of all my species, especially the Europeans." Swift and Chabon make truth claims only to encourage us to question them, whereas frauds like Wilkomirski depend on keeping their lies a secret.

Chabon's performance, in its small way, also participates in a more contemporary exploration of the relationship between history and the imagination. W. G. Sebald's documentary novels, J. M. Coetzee's anti-lectures and third-person memoirs, Simon Schama's historical novellas--these works all experiment with literary form to explore how narrative and the imagination help to shape public and private histories. These authors do not deny the documented past, nor do they conceal their inventions; rather, they explore the necessary, if elusive, role of language, storytelling, and the imagination in realizing any approximation of the lived past. For his part, Chabon merely argues that telling a story--even a farfetched one--is a legitimate way of talking with his readers about his work as a creative writer. Could anything be less controversial?

Like a prosecutor with a weak case, Maliszewski ultimately resorts to inflated rhetoric. "Liberties with the truth, so casually taken," he proclaims, "also weaken life." But what does this mean? Is he saying that memoir is a nobler art form than fiction? Or that realism is preferable to the fabulous? Either of these propositions might make for a provocative essay, but Maliszewski's point seems to be simply this: Chabon promised us a memoir and instead gave us a yarn. But the question remains, Where was the promise? Chabon's talk was not titled "Michael Chabon: The Early Years," or "Coming of Age in Columbia, Maryland"; it was titled "Golems I Have Known."

In the end, we are left with a clear sense of Maliszewski's outrage but no clear reasons for it beyond petty personal ones. Despite his own experiments with satire, he discovers he is tone-deaf when it comes to Chabon's tale ("I had been fooled"). But instead of committing himself to becoming a more attentive listener, he attacks the source of his embarrassment. At the same time, he dreams of someday exposing a hoax and is convinced that his moment has arrived. By hook or by crook, he is determined to land this fish. But perhaps I am being unfair. Perhaps Maliszewski harbors a deep faith in the existence of golems and ours is just a disagreement between a "skeptic" and a true mystic.

The only thing more suspect than Maliszewski's reading of Chabon's performance is the judgment of Bookforum's editors in publishing it. Chabon's talk could have served as a touchstone for a spirited discussion of Jewish identity, fictional representations of the Holocaust, the relationship between memory and invention, even the state of contemporary fiction. Maliszewski touches on some of these issues but is ultimately more interested in scandalmongering, the scandal here being that Chabon, author of short stories, novels, and a comic book, is--hold on to your hats--a writer of fiction. As an organization devoted to promoting lively conversations about Jewish literature, history, and culture, Nextbook would have welcomed intelligent responses to Chabon's talk, even sharply critical ones. That the editors of Bookforum preferred Maliszewski's sensationalism is disheartening; that they published it under the cover line "Michael Chabon's Holocaust Hoax" is disgraceful.

--Matthew Brogan

Program Director, Nextbook

New York

PAUL MALISZEWSKI RESPONDS:

Was Michael Chabon, as I argued in "Lie, Memory," delivering a mostly autobiographical lecture about his formative years? A lecture that combined some clearly fantastic elements that were easy to spot (the golems he says he's known) with one central fiction that was impossible to detect (his brush with a Holocaust fraud)? Or was Chabon, as Matthew Brogan insists, telling a tall tale and inventing for himself a more colorful and fictitious life, because that's just what fiction writers do? When I spoke with Chabon, he never compared his lecture to tales like Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox or Mark Twain's "Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." He never mentioned tall tales at all. To the complete contrary, Chabon emphasized the sometimes painful, factual truth of what he'd written. The lecture explains how he came to be a writer and how he has wrestled but finally come to feel comfortable with his identity as a Jew. His aunt and uncle, he pointed out, are rendered so honestly that he thought it best to give them new names, fictional shields behind which they can still lead their private lives.

Yet for Brogan, distinctions between genres are tidy and as easy to discern as a red light from a green. Chabon's references to golems are, he says, knowing winks that prove beyond any doubt that the lecture was not to be taken as truth. Unfortunately, every other member of the audience whom I spoke with disagrees. When Chabon told them he once met a children's book author named C. B. Colby, they figured he was telling the truth. When Chabon went on to explain that Colby--a real author, remember; a real man, not some character--was a pseudonym for Joseph Adler, a Holocaust survivor, they believed that as well. And when Chabon revealed that Adler's Holocaust memoir, The Book of Hell, turned out to be a fraud, and that Adler was really a Nazi named Viktor Fischer who had disguised himself as a Jew, they were horrified and sickened, but still they believed. Why? Are these people all fools? Is each one tone-deaf and an inattentive listener besides? Perhaps not. They hadn't, after all, believed in golems, and they didn't miss Chabon's winks either. Rather, they trusted that a lecture might have clearly fantastic elements and yet still aspire to tell a truth. We many rubes include in our number Brett Rodgers, a Nextbook fellow who introduced Chabon in Fairfax, Virginia, and Washington, DC, and then moderated the question-and-answer sessions that followed. Rodgers expressed surprise when I told him Chabon's brush with the Holocaust was made up. "I assume it's real," he had said to me. "If not, if he created a whole fictional identity, then he should be stopped."

I don't believe Chabon should be stopped, but I do think what he did is worth writing about and discussing, and I would hope that the care and attention I brought to the subject made my intentions more than clear. Whatever we decide to call Chabon's lecture--magic trick, embellished memoir, or tall tale spiked with bits of truth--matters less than the nature of the trick itself. What interested me was how the intentionally distorted life Chabon invents for Colby creates a more authentically Jewish identity for himself. It's still Chabon's life, and it remains recognizable in its facts, but it's supplemented, beefed up, and made hugely dramatic by his fictional brush with the Holocaust as a child.

I could accept that Chabon's trick was part of "a more contemporary exploration of the relationship between history and the imagination," if I saw any evidence at all that anyone had done any such exploring. Brogan told me he heard from several members of the audience after the lecture, and not one raised questions about its truth. Nor, he said, were they looking to discuss how skillfully Chabon had played upon their beliefs and levitated their many doubts. No, they just wanted to say how much they liked the story. "My guess," Brogan said, "is most people assumed it was true." Chabon muddied the truth of his life with his Holocaust tale, but provoked nobody to ask questions about this fiction in a life of facts. He appropriated the Holocaust for the gravity it exerts and then portrayed it in ways an audience would find comfortable and wholly familiar. That sounds like a failed exploration and, what's more, bad art.

Jonathan Swift and Daniel Defoe embarked on similar explorations. And they disguised their fictions in factual clothing: a traveler's account of faraway lands, the recently discovered journal of a shipwrecked sailor, or a historical record of the Black Plague. But they did so with clear purpose and evident design. They didn't seek to comfort their readers. Nor did they imagine themselves as humble tellers of tall tales. Moreover, they often hid their fictions because they had little choice. Writing fiction was not considered a respectable occupation in their day. Novels were trash, largely, just crude entertainments. Had the term "literary novel" existed, it would have been an oxymoron, if not the butt of jokes. Swift and Defoe disguised their fictions for aesthetic reasons, too. They wanted to raise questions more taxing--and more urgent--than Is this real or am I just making it all up? They wanted to accomplish something more than merely invite their readers to "share in the fun."

Gulliver's Travels remains a piece of serious fun. The specifics of Swift's satire may be lost on all but the most specialized readers--who not armed with a Norton critical edition can suss out Swift's feelings about religious tolerance in Holland, or get the jokes he tells at Charles V's expense?--but what remains is a broader comedy, a satire on humankind, hypocrisy, selfishness and cruelty, egotism and the solipsism of intellectuals. That satire still makes great demands on its audience. It doesn't just entertain, nor does it baffle and fool. It asks readers to wonder at how inhumanely they treat each other. It is unsparing, and it never lets a single reader off the hook. "Satire," Swift wrote, "is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own." Tellingly, he wrote this line at the beginning of another satire, The Battle of the Books. Swift was being hopeful, at least as much as he ever was. He was trying once more to reach out to readers and demand from them intelligence and imagination and rigor. Writing, after all, needn't be a mirror in which authors discover only themselves looking back and grinning. Is it a cause for scandal, really, to expect as much from an author today?