The Research Question.

I am a writer. When I decided to undertake the literary depiction of the life I was living in Wales, a refrain began to repeat itself in my mind until I wrote it down, at which point it became a research question: ‘Storytellers usually say “Once upon a time” when they start to tell a story, which is a pretty good way to start. It tells you that there is a story coming and that it happened a long time ago. But how do you start to tell a story that keeps happening?’

‘How do you start to tell a story that keeps happening’ evolved into ‘How do you tell a story that keeps happening’ and eventually became the catalyst for writing the critical component of Bendithion, although the phrase was actually used for the first time in the opening to my short story, ‘The Postmaster’s Song.’[1]

It brought into question all the usual moral and artistic/stylistic concerns: How to portray one’s friends and neighbours, colleagues and acquaintances without misrepresenting them, violating their privacy or betraying their secrets; How to portray one’s perception of experience without hiding or falsifying essential truths about what one really thinks, what one really saw, what one really knows, what one really heard and what one could find out with very little effort that would make a marvellous story and a host of enemies; How to reconcile one’s obligation to literature with one’s obligation to Wales.

After some reflection, I decided that there were four ways to answer this question:

1. Write only about the positive and the beautiful;[2]

2. Write about all aspects of an experience, including one’s own reservations, aversions and opinions, and give those about whom one is writing editorial input or control before submission for publication;

3. Fictionalise the material enough so that sensitive issues and people are unidentifiable, but the truth of the experience remains;

4.  Tell the truth and take the consequences.

I chose the second (which happened to be at that time for me, also the first) for ‘Bendithion’, the essay I submitted to AGNI. I chose the third for ‘The Postmaster’s Song’, a fictionalised version of the same story, and I chose the fourth or will be choosing the fourth (with a small component of the second regarding my friends) for the book I am writing[3] of which some of the material in this thesis forms a part.

This led me to the issue of truth[4] as depicted in literature, in both nonfiction and fiction. Why would truth change, just because facts did? It seemed and seems to me that truth is not truth which alters when it alteration finds, nor bends with the remover to remove. It seems, far more than love, “an ever fixéd mark”.[5] The essential question, therefore, that arose from those origins and initiated the process of writing this thesis was “What is the difference between fiction and nonfiction?”

Cymru seemed to answer that question for me daily, in a number of ways that I have tried to portray artistically, stylistically and symbolically in the creative text of this thesis. But Cymru’s answer (‘it doesn’t matter’), although in complete accord with metaphysics and my own conclusion, pre-empts the entire discussion on which the thesis is based.  It is, however, buttressed by an iconic precedent.

In The Works of Chaucer (New Cambridge Edition), F. N. Robinson makes this striking observation with regard to The Canterbury Tales:

There has been much speculation as to what suggested to Chaucer the idea of a pilgrimage. He may, of course, have been describing an actual experience, or more than one […] Whether such a company would ever have mingled as Chaucer’s pilgrims do, or would have entered upon such a round of story-telling is idle to discuss, as idle as to question whether the speakers could have been heard from horseback on the road. Literal truth of fact the Canterbury Tales obviously do not represent […] But there is essential, poetic truth in the portrayal of the characters, in their sentiments and personal relations, and no less, in the representation of the pilgrimage as a social assemblage.[6]

In other words, in literature, it doesn’t matter..."

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[1] ‘The Postmaster’s Song’, one of ten winning entries in a Welsh and international literary fiction competition, was published in The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Cinnamon Press. Of this story, the Publisher, Dr Jan Fortune-Wood, said: “From the first read, Harrison Solow’s ‘The Postmaster’s Song’ leapt off the page. The style is engaging and innovative. From the three possible beginnings to the delightful end, which invites the next leap of imagination, the reader is treated as an intelligent participant in this part fairy-tale, part creative non-fiction story. It’s refreshing to find an author who can not only spin tales, but also take risks – crossing genres, pushing the boundaries of perception, playing with language – and all with a light touch, beautifully controlled. It’s an exquisite story, finely told...” –Dr Jan Fortune-Wood, press release, 2010.

 I include these kind remarks as evidence of ex-categorical writing and for the references to ‘fairy-tale’, ‘crossing genres’ and ‘boundaries of perception’. This story appears in the text.

[2] Which was not difficult because, contrary to a relatively sophisticated and critical background, at that time, all I saw was positive and beautiful.

[3] Bendithion, the book, is represented by Russell Galen, The Scovil, Galen, Ghosh Literary Agency, in New York.

[4] As opposed to fact. Oddly, or perhaps not, the dictionary defines truth as that which is “in accordance with fact or reality”, thus divorcing in principle, the facts of a matter from the reality of it. It also defines truth as [either] “a fact or belief that is accepted as true” therefore again, disassociating truth from fact as a sole definition; associating truth with belief as an equal alternative definition. 

[5] Sonnet 116, William Shakespeare.

[6] F.N. Robinson, The Works of Chaucer (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1957), p. 1-2.