Authenticity
I had a conversation with the Degenerate last night about authenticity. He was pitching some ideas for future posts – I think he thinks this is a joint project now – and I expressed skepticism about some of the stories he wanted to tell.
“Nobody is going to believe that,” I told him, “I don’t think I believe it. I’m not even sure you do.”
He shrugged and said something about me missing the point and it being the story he wanted to tell.
I said, “I’m just worried that readers will think you’re being inauthentic because you’re claiming these things are true when they’re clearly not.”
“There’s a difference between authenticity and objective truth,” he said. “This isn’t the news, or a history book, or even a biography. It’s two guys’ blog—”
“One guy.”
“Fine. One guy’s blog, that gets to be about whatever he wants it to be about. And authenticity is inherently intersubjective; it’s about truth as experienced, not truth out there. The author’s assertion and the reader’s sense that this is real. And it can be transmitted through the literary and not just the literal.”
“Wow,” I said. “You’ve thought a lot about this….”
“And you haven’t?” he demanded.
“I just think it could be confusing. I’m trying to talk about making sense of the world and when you show up out of nowhere with these stories, I don’t see how you are helping with that…”
He shook his head, “You can’t make sense of the world just by putting it into little boxes. There are true things to say, authentic ones, that don’t fit into your boxes.”
“Besides,” he said, smiling, “it happened exactly the way I told you. Word for word. Now can I just write it up?”