Blurred Bounderies
“I have just reread the last paragraph. I am not too well satisfied, but Oskar’s pen ought to be, for writing tersely and succinctly, it has managed, as terse, succinct accounts so often do, to exaggerate and mislead, if not to lie.”
October 21, 2004
"Am I going to be in your blog ?" asked LB with a twinge of sarcasm
We met to talk over L.B.’s notes on my manuscript, and she offered to take me out afterward for a belated birthday dinner.
I took a breath and said, "The blog is a funny thing."
What I meant, of course, was that I was damned if I did and damned if I didn't.
Once someone finds out about my blog, it's a no-win situation. Some people often hope to be mentioned but are invariably disappointed when they are. Sometimes, people get angry or embarrassed when I write about them. "That's not what I said." "That's not how it happened." "Why did you write that instead of the other thing?” ‘“You forgot to mention…" and so on.
Occasionally, I try to be obscure, but that only makes things worse: "What were you trying to say? Did you mean that you think I'm a big fat jerk?"
"What? Settle down. What are you talking about?"
(I think it’s clear by now that I’m the one who is the jerk.)
Anyway, LB did have a lot of funny things to say last night, and I did find myself hoping to remember them. I didn't, of course. I do remember this, though: one thing that LB loves to do is quote me quoting her. As I've explained before, there is a character in the novel based on her. The character is juiced up for dramatic impact, and L.B.’s not entirely comfortable with the portrayal.
"It's not you," I try to tell her, "It's a character."
"Well, yes," she says, "but anyone who knows you — who knows us, or how we met — will instantly recognize that it's me."
She's asked me to consider changing it a bit. Nothing too extreme, just change a few identifying details: the color of her hair, the location of her apartment, things like that. Nothing has been decided. In any case, like I said, she loves to quote the lines I gave to her character — especially the ones she finds particularly embarrassing. Last night, she pulled out quite a few. She seemed to get such a kick out of it that I finally said to her, "You're going to be so disappointed when I change that character around, and you no longer recognize yourself."
"I know," she admitted, picking up her glass by the stem and swirling the wine around for a moment. "I need to talk to my shrink about this."
“You and me both.”
