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Good Reading : February 2005
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Garner also waded through thousands of pages of court transcripts, and interviewed family, friends and witnesses. Following Orwell’s example, writers often immerse themselves in the lives of sub-cultural groups. American Mark Kramer followed two surgeons for over a year (Invasive Procedures , 1983), and Ted Conover spent many months riding the railways with hoboes (Rolling Nowhere, 1984). Creative non-fiction writers have often gone to dangerous lengths to immerse themselves in their topics, like Australian journalist Paul McGeough who covered the Iraq war from behind enemy lines. Immersion colours the relationships the writ- er develops with sources, leading to the subjective viewpoint common in creative non-fiction.Writers often explore connections between the story they are researching and events in their own lives. In Joe Cinque’s Consolation Helen Garner tells readers early on that she became interested in the tragic, perverse tale of Joe’s killing at a time when her third marriage had just broken up ‘in a welter of desolation’. She had her own reasons for wanting to look at women accused of murder: I needed to find out if anything made them different from me: whether I could trust myself to keep the lid on the vengeful, punitive force that was in me, as it is in everyone – the wildness that one keeps in its cage, releasing it only in dreams and fantasy. (Helen Garner Joe Cinque’s Consolation p25) Creative non fiction leads the reader from sur- face events to their broader ethical and philosophical implications, which gives the writing an enduring relevance. Joe Cinque’s Consolation is, at one level, a recount- ing of the trials of Anu Singh and Madhavi Rao and the impact of Joe’s death on his family and friends. But Garner uses the book to raise some challenging questions: has our legal system become detached from its ethical basis? Is young people’s accept- ance of suicide evidence of ‘a new loss of heart, a collapse of shared meaning and hope’? How can we grieve? Can we ever know the ‘truth’ about a crime? And what is the writer’s ethical position when she pokes her nose into people’s tragedies? Creative non-fiction writers explore political or social issues by letting individuals represent larger groups.They use ordinary people’s experi- ences to confront us with society’s moral gaps, as in George Orwell’s moving reflection on a young slum dweller he glimpses from the train: She had a round pale face, the usual exhausted face of the slum girl who is twenty-five and looks forty, thanks to miscarriages and drudgery; and it wore, for the second in which I saw it, the most desolate, hopeless expression I have ever seen. It struck me then that we are mistaken when we say that “It isn’t the same for them as it would be for us,” and that people bred in the slums can imagine nothing but the slums. For what I saw in her face was not the ignorant suffering of an animal. She knew well enough what was happening to her —understood as well as I did how dreadful a destiny it was to be kneeling there in the bitter cold, on the slimy stones of a slum backyard, poking a stick up a foul drain-pipe. (The Road to Wigan Pier, p18) To take the reader deeper, many creative non-fiction writers use narrative devices such as scenes, suspense, point of view, character and dialogue. Garner’s use of narrative makes the convoluted tragedy of Joe Cinque’s death accessible and moving. Garner describes law- yers, witnesses and relatives as if they were characters in a story, and the events of the week of Joe’s death become as suspenseful as the plot of any crime novel. Courtroom interrogations become riveting dialogue, and with Garner as our first-person narrator we share the high drama of moments such as the judge- ment in Singh’s trial: Justice Crispin entered on a tide of serious- ness, not with his habitual hasty sweep, but slowly, almost grandly, looking sombre as always, but also paler, and with his head held higher, giving more eye contact: offering his face. He bowed and sat down. Laying his papers on the bench before him, he raised his eyes to the room, and launched into it without prologue or preamble. “I find the defendant not guilty of murder,” he said, “but I find the defendant guilty of murder.” Mrs Cinque uttered a choked cry. A stunned, thick silence filled the court. What? What did he say? How can she be guilty of mur- der and yet not guilty of murder? Mr Pappas leapt to his feet. “Your Honour,” he said. “I believe your Honour has made an error. You said ‘Guilty of murder’, but with respect, your Honour, you meant ‘Guilty of manslaughter’.” Three beats. No one breathed. The judge had made a colossal, clanging Freudian slip. (Joe Cinque’s Consolation , pp68-9) categorical 24 goodreading
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