Autofiction by Stevan Eldred-Grigg
My History, I Think (2ed.). Piwaiwaka Press (Wellington) 2020
Green Grey Rain, Piwaiwaka Press (Wellington) 2021
What is a true tale? A true tale is not fiction. A true tale is not non-fiction. A true tale is not quite memoir. A true tale is a little more than memoir. Non-fiction on the whole wants its world of words to be straightforward, clear-cut, open-and-shut, flat, on foot. Fiction likes words to fly. Non-fiction in its well-meant treading towards truth asks that each word almost always have only one meaning. Fiction in its fine twining around tendril after tendril of truths knows that every word, any word, even or, or and, and or and and, has many meanings.
A historian or biographer writes a word. And then writes another word next to it. One word, plus one word, make two words. Two plus two make four. Or so the historian or biographer does their best to think, yet knows is not so. As any reader of 1984 knows, two plus two can make five.
A true tale is less than, and more than, a tale. A true tale is more than, and less than, true.
A true tale is a string of words and other marks about people and places and other things that by common consent most of us who live on this planet think most of the time, when we’re awake at least, to be more or less the real world. A true tale at the same time is written with the feeling that those things are not the real world.
Can words be a world? Can a world be words?
A historian or biographer writes a word. And then writes another word next to it. One word, plus one word, make two words. Two plus two make four. Or so the historian or biographer does their best to think, yet knows is not so. As any reader of 1984 knows, two plus two can make five.
A true tale is less than, and more than, a tale. A true tale is more than, and less than, true.
A true tale is a string of words and other marks about people and places and other things that by common consent most of us who live on this planet think most of the time, when we’re awake at least, to be more or less the real world. A true tale at the same time is written with the feeling that those things are not the real world.
Can words be a world? Can a world be words?
My History, I Think
‘I am, I suppose, a hoarder. I have carefully filed away all the pain, all the personal shame, that has failed to take written or printed shape and that forms the past. The past, which could break my heart … ’ The year is 1994. A writer lives in a wide white house on a green riverbank. He is writing a book about the lives of rich people a century or so ago. At the same time, he seems to be writing his own story. Neither autobiography nor yet fiction, this fascinating book traces the workings inside the mind of a leading writer. It is part history, but it is also an intensely personal revelation as to the way a committed writer develops, and even why. The writer moves backwards and forwards between the present and the past, between last century and the century before last. The text twists in and out of the lines of certain stories and novels. We shift from one place to another: from Christchurch to Chicago, from Patagonia to the promenades of Noumea. ‘The interesting part of a story is always concealed,’ says Eldred-Grigg, who then proceeds to give us glimpses of just what his secrets might be. |