How we love to write about each other. And we love to read about each other (or watch movies) as well but for very different reasons. I want to ramble about it a bit.
One notion is that we think that we are now getting the absolute truth because how else would it get into print? Publishers know they print what makes money, what people buy, but if this idea about absolute truth sells books, what's the trouble? It may not be true at all, but who will ever find out? Publishers love to pretend that writers are part of a meritocracy, that there is some absolute way to tell which writer is "better" or even more truthful. There is actually no way except sales, which are hardly based on merit. More like notoriety.
One might be a sophisticated person who knows a story is white-washed but enjoys guessing what was left out or finessed. This is esp. fun when you find out something bad is even worse. For instance, when we find out that evil as Hitler was, it wasn't as bad as him persuading his mistress to poop on him because it was arousing. (To him. Not to others, maybe.) That seemed to us WORSE, somehow, though it didn't really hurt anyone. (I have not seen any movie that incorporated this fetish though there are lots of Nazi stories.)
The story that a loving mother might tell is quite different from the tale of the kid next door, victim of the brat's predatory narcissism. Consider Michael Jackson's family.
One bio might simply list facts and dates, though reflection would accept the idea that these could be slanted, enriched, or edited to render different judgements. In fact, that's what our history books have always done, always arranged to flatter whichever power is in control. This can boomerang badly, as the Repubs are finding out. They should have contemplated what they left out before it went public.
Strangely, there is a public consensus about groups (sometimes individuals) and who they are. When it's bad we call it stigma. But the reverse is saint-making. We KNOW what "Indians" are like, so we accept and defend "The Education of Little Tree" as true, though it was written by a white bigot with his head in LaLa land. We sometimes demand such untruthful but satisfying stories be removed, but this one remains in print because the income is pretty good. And authentic "Indians" acted the parts of fantasy people in the movie because they need the work. The facts came to mean little.
Our president is believed in spite of thousands of lies because the alternative is unthinkable. The alternative to that theory is unthinkable. World-shattering. It's the death of money as a sign of merit, so how will we know where the "top" is now? Can compassion form a hierarchy?
One should not attempt a style or "voice" when beginning to write because that is something that arrives organically through literal connections between neurons in the brain. It takes a hundred hours, they say. I agree. But even if a writer is not yet developed, what they say might have considerable value.
Drawbacks for writing about someone personally known are different from drawbacks for writing about someone UNknown, but there are always drawbacks. Feel free to "go fantasy" and make someone up -- people have done that from the beginning -- but there are drawbacks there, too.
This morning I spent some time on email talking about the consequences of the opposition to historical white man's triumph stories. My correspondent sells cowboy and explorer bronzes, the kind Bob Scriver used to create, but the bottom has gone out of the market as the reputation of those frontier folks has fallen. Lewis and Clark are no longer heroes around here, because the only "Indians" they killed were Blackfeet only a few miles from here. They are real, with names and descendants.
If Bob Scriver or his equivalent were working today, their sculptures would be a hard sell. Too bad for those who imitate his work, hoping for the same outcome. Different times mean different merits. Consider historical change-making books like "Uncle Tom's Cabin" or "Black Beauty." What book really NEEDS to be written right now. Is there any way a white male person could write it?
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