The myth of the myth
January 14th, 2009 | by Ben Hoare |Myths are fashionable, especially in biography and other kinds of truth writing.
- Proponents of the myth of Lewis Carroll say that early biographies of the author distorted the facts of his life, creating a fictionalised version of the man.
- Lucasta Miller’s The Bronte Myth makes similar claims about earlier books on the Brontes.
- Outside of biography, there’s the diet myth, E-Myth, the myth of cancer, and lots, lots more.
What normally happens, when a writer tells us about some myth or other, is that he or she then goes on to give us an alternative version of the story.
The thesis is: the first story conceals the truth through myth; the second story reveals it through facts.
I like these books about myths. Karoline Leach’s In the Shadow of the Dreamchild, about the Carroll myth, makes a fascinating analysis of the way in which the conventional view of Carroll was constructed.
But these new versions are myths too.
Leach uses her imagination to construct an alternative view of Lewis Carroll - one which seems to deliberately subvert the traditional image of him. The new story is defined by its opposition to the old one, and its constant reference to facts does nothing to convince me that it is any more (or less) true.
Rather than seeing stories as a potential conduit for truth, I think of the story as having its own truth - the truth is wrapped up in the story.
Related posts:
