A few months ago a magazine editor sent me proofs of some upcoming higher-education books, to see if I’d be interested in writing a review. One was Wannabe U, by University of Connecticut sociologist Gaye Tuchman. That sparked my interest — my father was once a professor at UConn and I lived in Storrs until I was 13. But when I started leafing through the pages, the book immediately struck me as … odd. It purports to be the study of an un-named university’s quest for status. All the characters have pseudonyms and the author says some of the details of their jobs have been changed. But the university in question is obviously the University of Connecticut.
For example, on page 14, the book quotes President “Whitmore” as saying, at his inauguration, “Nothing is more important to the quality of life in this state than educational excellence.” If you Google that phrase, exactly as written, in quotes, you get only two hits. One is from Wannabe U. The other is from the actual inaugural speech of former University of Connecticut President Philip E. Austin.
Yet Tuchman continues to refuse to confirm the identity of the university she wrote about. This strikes me as problematic and a little bizarre. Allegedly, it’s a function of restrictions mandated by the UConn IR board. I’ve never interacted with an IR board but I know plenty of people who have and some of their stories beggar belief. And even if you grant that they were trying to protect the interests of human subjects, I’m not sure how that’s accomplished here. If an author writes a straightforward nonfiction account of real people, then they’re ethically bound by all kinds of bright line standards: you can’t quote people saying things they didn’t actually say, you can’t describe them doing things they didn’t actually do.
But once you cross the line into fictionalization, you introduce all kinds of ambiguity and uncertainty without actually protecting the people in question. As a reader, I can confirm that president Austin actually said the Googled words above because his inaugural speech happens to be on the Internet. But I have no way of knowing if all the other words and actions attributable to “President Whitmore” are fairly attributable to Austin, even though the book clearly implies that they are.
More broadly, the whole exercise of denying an obvious truth is fundamentally disrespectful to readers and counter to scholarly values. It’s all pretty strange.
(Photo by Flickr user GlennFleishman)
3 Responses to The Problem With Making Stuff Up
dank48 - October 9, 2009 at 8:40 am
This is the flip side of what I think of as the Dan Brown Problem. While TDVC, A&D, and whatever the hell the latest one is called are obviously all fiction and are all clearly labeled and marketed as fiction, Brown has framed at least the first two with claims of historical, geographical, etc. accuracy–and as plenty of people have pointed out, these claims are bologna. My guess is that this has less to do with deviousness than with authorial and editorial incompetence. (Actually, that seems to me more truly sinister than some sort of conspiracy would be.)Assuming that that’s not the case with Tuchman’s book, the question becomes Just how thin a veil of fictionality can cover a roman a clef? Is it enough just to make up names and substitute them in factual accounts of the doings of actual people? How unobvious must the key be to protect the author? The made-up names may provide legal protection, but social . . . ? I wonder.
literarytype - October 10, 2009 at 9:33 pm
Not sure what your take on this was…did you like the book?
dank48 - October 12, 2009 at 10:25 am
Tuchman should have taken a lesson from Truman Capote’s Unanswered Prayers.