Gawker’s John Cook is ticked at This American Life over the Mike Daisey thing — and grinchily points out that the iconic (and brilliant) radio program has broadcast stories from David Sedaris and the late David Foster Wallace that contained admitted fabrications from their authors. Cook:

Sedaris, Wallace, and Daisey harnessed the power of actuality—the inherent force generated by saying, “I saw it with my own eyes”—to drive their stories. To the extent that they did not actually see it with their own eyes—no matter how internal or inconsequential or funny those stories are—they are liars. And even if the inventions are at the margins, those exaggerated little details are the very moments that lodge in our minds, and make us say, “Hey, did you read that David Foster Wallace piece?” That’s why the David Wain it’s-true-except-when-it-isn’t argument doesn’t wash. If the false parts are essential to making the whole thing work, then the whole thing doesn’t really work. Shave those little cheats out of the “narrative,” and Wallace’s artful accounts of neurosis in the heart of consumer culture lose their edge. Sedaris’ escapades become commonplace. And Daisey’s indignation becomes sanctimony. And if the false parts aren’t essential—why are they there?

I don’t remember when I decided that David Sedaris made things up. I just know that one day, it occurred to me that nobody can have lived a life in which so many funny and weird things happen to them, and in just such a way. I’m still a big fan — he’s a terrific storyteller — but I quit believing that he was anything but a fabulist a long time ago. It turns out that the writer Alex Heard actually fact-checked some of Sedaris’s stuff five years ago, and established that yes, Sedaris really does make significant portions of his stuff up. Which, says Heard, is fine — but there’s a word for this stuff, and it’s called nonfiction. Sedaris is cheating.

I guess it’s strange that this didn’t bother me more. Should it have? Unlike the Daisey attack on Foxconn and Apple, nothing really was at stake in those stories (except, as Heard point out, for the few people maligned by Sedaris’s fabrications). Still, it’s the principle of the thing. As Heard says:

Whether Sedaris understands the difference between fiction and nonfiction is moot at this point–he could label his next book “hallucinations” and it would sell–but the principle still matters. The editors and radio producers who packaged Sedaris’s earlier work certainly understood the difference. They knew that, in our time, nonfiction is bankable in ways that fiction is not. What bugs me is that they milked the term for all its value, while laughing off any of the ethical requirements it entails.

This is something I deal with personally nearly every day. I’m writing a non-fiction book about my sister Ruthie. Almost every time I sit down to work on the narrative, and start sifting through interview notes and my own memories, I run across an occasion in which I wish Ruthie had said this or done that, because it would have made a better story. But, well, she didn’t, and I don’t have license to make this stuff up, even if it better illustrates a truth of her life or her character. I’m really grateful that I chronicled so much of the drama on my blog, because I don’t have to rely on my memory for much of it. There was one key incident that I would have sworn on a Bible happened one way, but that actually did not — and I know this because I wrote down what happened on my blog, the day it did. This kind of thing has been really helpful to me. I have been checking quotes with those quoted, because even though I’m operating almost entirely from transcripts of recorded interviews, I want to make sure I have this stuff right. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect everyone to remember everything with 100 percent accuracy, but I want them, and I want myself, to make every effort to get this as close to accurate as possible. We are presenting this to the public as non-fiction, and I owe it to those who will buy my book, and to the memory of my sister, to tell the truth about what happened, to the best of my memory. If, after it’s published, somebody is able to prove that some event I recount didn’t quite happen that way, I must be able to say with a straight face that it was an honest mistake I worked hard to avoid.

It can be frustrating to be bound by the truth because there are times when I wish the story with my sister were more straightforward. But it turns out that these irritating bits that won’t allow me to tie up the narrative in a neat bow are actually essential to the story I’m telling. Was the way she dealt with cancer an example of unambiguous courage, or did it require a degree of self-deception? That is, was what we all saw as raw courage really the product of Ruthie lying to herself about the seriousness of her own condition? Even the people closest to her aren’t totally sure — or at least they aren’t unanimous in their judgment. And if Ruthie did deceive herself to a certain extent about how sick she was, how is that not still courage? Is a firefighter who runs into a burning building to save children uncourageous if, in order to motivate himself to do his duty in conditions of almost certain death, he tells himself that he’s going to survive the ordeal before him? I don’t think anybody would say so. It would have made my job as a storyteller so much easier if I had been able to say that Ruthie faced her cancer in total, stone-cold knowledge of the dismal odds of survival. But that wouldn’t have been true — and it wouldn’t have been true to the character of my sister, who found the courage to work with troubled children in the classroom every day because she ignored the plain and at times overwhelming evidence that particular kids were wrecks who weren’t going to amount to much no matter what anybody did. Ruthie always tried to see the best in individuals, and in every situation. It’s what kept her going when I would have given up a cause as hopeless.

If I didn’t feel bound by ethical restraint to keep pushing for the real story of my sister’s life, I could have told a simple story of inspiring true grit, and nobody would have complained. It would have given the reader a nice emotional lift, and the handful of people who knew better probably wouldn’t have complained, because the story in the end would have made Ruthie look good, and would have conveyed the deeper truth that she was an incredibly brave person. Instead, I get to tell a complex story of inspiring true grit. Ruthie still looks good, because, in my view, the facts lead you inescapably to the conclusion that she was an incredibly brave person. But by forcing myself to stay true to the facts as I’ve learned them, I’ve had to confront not only a certain mystery in my sister’s character, but also a complexity about human nature, and in the nature of courage. I think the story is going to be so much better for it. I hope so. In any case, whether it is or it isn’t, the book is non-fiction, and that means if I tell readers they’re about to read a true story, a story that’s literally true, then I have an obligation to write what happened, as straightforwardly as I can.

I’m not saying all this to pat myself on the back, but rather to make a point about the importance of truth-telling beyond ethical obligations. What made so many people who didn’t know my sister respond so powerfully (for example) to the story I told about her and the community that rallied to her side was the faith they had that the story I chronicled on my blog was true. And it was. I wish I had a big scene to put into the narrative in which Ruthie and I had cleared up all the messy sibling rivalry between ourselves before she died, but that didn’t happen. I wish I had had that scene in real life, but for reasons that will come out in the narrative, it only happened in a glancing, frustrating way. But that’s how life is, right? But that lack of closure has compelled me to ask questions about our relationship that I wouldn’t have otherwise done, and on two occasions uncovered things Ruthie never told me that reduced me to tears, and let me know that beneath it all, things were okay. That she never could bring herself to say these things to me strikes me as unbearably poignant, given what happened. Anyway, you’ll get all this in the book, if you buy it. The point is, the messy truth that I’ve uncovered is far more interesting, I think, than any neat, Sunday-school-worthy narrative. And I wouldn’t have found these things if I had allowed myself to be satisfied with turning the story of my sister’s life and death into merely a good story, in which, to quote a famous document of our time, “the facts were fixed around the policy.”