evidentiary:alchemy

When the prosecution questions a state witness, this is direct examination. It is called direct because the testimony is friendly for the prosecution's case. In other words, the witness was called on the prosecution's behalf. The defense has the right to question the witness as well. This is called cross-examination. (And when and if the defense presents its own case, these are reversed - for example, the prosecution cross-examines defense witnesses). In essence, cross-exam is a chance to raise doubts about hostile testimony, and by extension, the entire case.

There are two primary objectives for cross-examination:

1. To call into the question the credibility, knowledge, or memory of a witness.

2. To explain, qualify, or even overcome damaging testimony given on direct examination.

In part one, I wrote the following memory:

Once, when I was six or seven, my father burst into the back door, his hands raised, palms facing out, dripping with red liquid. He had been playing all afternoon with his band saw, drinking beer, ranting about Ronald Reagan. "I'm bleeding," he yelled. My mom took one look and passed out, flat on her back on the kitchen floor. My father laughed. It turned out he was joking. No blood. Only iodine, poured over his palms in an elaborate plot to prank my mother.

Since we are using legal process metaphorically and not literally, I did not write the memory in question-answer form. Direct testimony, in this model, flows from our own memories and writings. But what if I put it through the adversarial wringer? What might emerge if I attempt to raise doubts about my own credibility as a witness? About my capacity for memory? My direct eyewitness knowledge of events? Cross-examination might look something like this (not adhering strictly to law, of course, since this is only metaphor):

You say you were six or seven when you witnessed this?

Yes

Can you remember which age?

No.

So you can't remember when this happened?

No.

Where were you when your father came through the back door?

I think I was playing on the floor, near the front kitchen door.

But you're not certain?

I'm pretty sure, but it was a long time ago.

Could you see the back door?

No. Not from where I was playing. I only saw the door when I stood up, after I heard it open.

(You are probably noticing that cross-examination is sometimes tedious and boring. It can really drive you insane. While I do not recommend avoiding hard labor in the writing process, I am going to fast-forward for the sake of this post.) Later in cross:

When did you first remember this event?

Recently. A few months ago.

How did you come to remember it?

I was freewriting for an essay -

You were freewriting? Can you explain that term?

Yes. I was writing without editing or thinking. Just letting the words come out. A lot of writers do this to prepare for writing.

So you were writing without thinking about what you said?

Yes.

Your sister testified that your dad did cut his hand on the saw, and that he poured iodine on the wounds before coming indoors. Are you aware of this testimony?

Yes, but that is not my recollection. I remember my mother becoming very upset after she woke up from fainting. She yelled at my dad for faking something serious and scaring her.

Are you aware there are medical records from your father's emergency treatment?

No. I never saw those. They could be from another time. He used his saw a lot.

(And fast forward again ... )

Do you have a good relationship with your father?

No. We haven't spoken in years.

I chose this memory because it seems relatively benign and mundane. But even the most simple memories are multi-dimensional, complex, and difficult to reconstruct. Here, I am exposed as a biased, unreliable witness. I can't remember my age, or even whether I was playing by the kitchen door. I couldn't even see my father as he came in from the garage. My sister provided credible, conflicting facts (and thus, credible and conflicting interpretations as well). Worse - my own writing process may not be entirely credible itself.

Memories are not only contestable, they are mercurial. They change to fit our constructions of the world (or rather, we change them in order to construct our realities). Even as I wrote that cross-examination, my memories began to change. The implications for writing and writing process are either disastrous or exhilarating, depending on your epistemological bent.

Of course, there could also be a re-direct and re-cross, but for now, I rest my case.

Next in this series: What is the discovery phase? And how can I use it in my writing process?

note: this is part one of an exploration of admission requests - my next post will go much more in-depth.

Discovery is the phase in which both parties - defense and prosecution in a criminal case, or defense and plaintiff in a civil case - seek information from one another.  This can include depositions (testimony under oath), interrogatories (written questions), admission requests (when one party asks the other to admit or deny particular facts), and requests for documents such as papers, audio tapes, photos, etc. Unlike the actual trial, discovery requests can include non-admissable information. In fact, they can include any information that might reasonably lead to admissable evidence.   

How can we use discovery in writing?

Remember, we are engaging in a dialogic, adversarial relationship with our memory, perceptions, and imagination.   As I discussed earlier, we have to be ready to play prosecution and defense, to think about the jury, and to cross-examine our ideas.   Once we can do this, the writing process changes.   Establishing facts, questioning witnesses, and excavating documentary evidence are all suddenly fraught with questions and doubt.  They become reflective.  Reflection is especially fruitful in creative nonfiction, when memories, emotions, and interpretations are often contestable - and indeed, contested. 

This post will focus on admission requests.  It seems so simple, right?  The prosecution asks the defense to admit or deny certain facts.  Prosecutors may wish to establish that both sides agree on a victim's cause of death, for example.  This smooths the process and provides focus for the trial.  If both sides agree on cause of death, this does not need to be contested in court.  The questions will lie elsewhere. 

But this is never clear-cut, especially when writing memoirs or personal essays.  I may believe a certain memory one day, but doubt it the next.  Or I may disagree with my sister about something our parents said.  In order to create a favorable image, I might be reticent to admit certain things.  (Will I want to admit to the world that I have lied?  That I have been mean, nasty, and selfish at times?  That I stole or cheated?   Or that I do not understand my own life?  That I am unreliable?  That my memory fails?)  And oh yes, do not forget that most jurisdictions will not allow a party to deny an admission request simply because the answer is unknown.  A position must be taken - a decision made.  There is no getting out of anything.

Okay.  So you want to write an essay about your grandmother's nervous breakdowns, but you were too young to understand the ones you witnessed (as if anyone can ever fully understand them, anyway).   You may have some vague, blurry memories of her throwing plates or being taken to the hospital.  Let's say her brothers and sisters do not agree about the cause or nature of her disease.  Neither do the doctors.   Which facts are contestable, and which can be agreed upon from the outset?  How can an admission request help you along in the process?

Of course, this is not literal.  We are using the legal process as metaphor.  There is no need to serve papers to your family (or self).   What you can do is take note of when family members agree.  Same with doctors. You can ask questions of family members and make lists of agreed upon and disputed facts. You can also consider why certain facts are so contestable, and what that might mean for the "case" (but that comes later).   

The great thing about admissions requests is that they are very narrowly focused - very concrete.  You cannot ask vague questions about how someone feels.  You must be direct, specific, and clear.  Did grandma throw plates at grandpa?  Did those plates hit his head?   In establishing the "facts," you are also focused intensely on the concrete details of the narrative.  This will help create a rich, nuanced story.   And because you know which "facts" are contestable - and which are not worth a fight - you reserve your energies for real conflicts.

One of the most important aspects of admission requests - and discovery in general - is the idea of being as open and honest as possible.  Any attempt to hide facts (or documents, but we'll get to that later) will damage your case.  Your lawyer - or in this case, your writing process - will simply not be ready to wrestle with the conflicts that arise from dishonesty,  half-truths, deception, or lazy thinking.  You must be prepared to look bad.  How can you get to the truth with only half the story?

next: an in-depth exploration of admission requests, establishment of facts, and the problem of objective truth

Now that Typepad is working, I can finally post the second part of admission requests.

Questions to explore (pulled from your emails):

How can this help my writing process?  What if no one agrees on any facts?

As I mentioned in part one, an admission request allows the defense and prosecution to focus on the contested details and aspects of the case (since they know which facts they already agree on).  Contested memories, emotions, events, or details are where the conflict lies.  In other words, figuring out which things lack conflict will help you discover which things are teeming with it.

Even this can be tricky, however.  Every member of your family may remember a particular holiday differently, but these inconcistencies often mean absolutely nothing.  The more creative nonfiction you write, the more you will understand how fluid and mercurial human memory can be.  On the other hand, these inconsistencies may reflect the inner turmoil of an unhappy family.  Or the quirkiness of a strange one.  In such cases, the holiday memories might be useful.

This is where judgment comes in.  Pay attention to your physical and emotional responses.  Does it hurt your stomach, just thinking about that holiday?   Does your jaw tense tight, when your sister shares her version of events?  Or do you just enjoy the story?  If you feel a visceral response, there might be something there (or you might just have a competitive relationship with your sister - which, hey, could make a great essay).

What if nobody agrees?  What if there are no established facts?  How do I find them objectively?

The first thing you need to realize is that there is no such thing as pure objectivity.  Even the most scientific processes are laden with assumptions and bias.  If an educator wants to study the effectiveness of a particular teaching style, and she does so by measuring standardized test scores, she has already revealed at least two biases: that standardized scores reflect learning, and that higher test scores are a worthwhile goal.   Even the methodologies of so-called objective measurement can be biased:

This brings us back to the admission requests.  Do similar memories imply accurate memories?  Not necessarily.  You may be asking the wrong questions. 

But none of this means you have to doubt every fact or stop trusting your judgement.  In response to strong criticism of bias in scientific research, Karl Popper “proposed a standard for testing knowledge claims” (Gall, et al., 2003, p. 29).  According to this standard, a hypothesis can never be proven; it can only be refuted or supported by the evidence (Gall, et al., 2003).  Which is precisely what creative nonfiction strives to do - provide evidence (concrete memories, actions, and details) in support of certain ideas (cultural, familial, personal, or political). 

Popper maps out a much-needed middle ground between subjectivity and science.  No one can claim to know the absolute truth, but at the same time, science is not forced to dissolve into meaningless relativism.  This is why an adversarial, dialogic process is so important.  It helps writers reflect on the slippery nature of truth and memory, finding their own middle ground.  Their own truth.  Admissions requests are a good first step in the process.

References:

Gall, M. D., Gall, J. P., & Borg, W.R. (2003). Educational Research: An
Introduction (7th ed.). Boston: A and B.

Wolcott, Harry. (1995). The Art of Fieldwork. London: Altamira Press.

Part three of the series on Discovery Phase: Document Requests

Document requests are fairly simple on the surface.  Videos, legal documents, audio tapes, and other items may be crucial to the discovery of admissable evidence in a case.  They add dimension and complexity to the story and can serve to verify certain facts. 

Documents can be incredibly useful for creative nonfiction as well.  But be prepared.  They can also surprise us.  I recently received a box of family photographs from my mother, only to discover old, crumbling papers detailing the lives of my great-grandparents and grandparents. There were legal papers, property deeds for relatives I never knew existed, death certificates, receipts for coffins, maps, photographs, and ship schedules, printed in German. The family myth had always been that my grandmother immigrated to the United States from Germany, albeit under ambiguous circumstances.  The documents showed that it was, in fact, my great-grandparents who had immigrated, and that Grandma was actually born in Iowa.  (She apparently returned to Germany for some time, and then returned to the United States during WWII.  This could account for the confusion). 

What I came to understand was that I actually had something invested in the original story - emotionally and psychologically.  It was part of my identity.  What did it mean that Grandma allowed this myth to exist?  Why had she lied in her own diary, which she left to me after she died?  Or did she lie?  Were the documents the ultimate authority, after all?  Why should I believe a birth certificate over her own diary?   Why did any of this matter at all?  What did it mean for my sense of self and family?

So know this:  If you ask to see the papers, you may not like what you see.  Or your sense of reality and identity may shift.  This is good.  It means you are onto something.   

A few years ago, I requested my medical charts in order to verify certain dates, as well as the names of medications, tests, and therapies I had tried.   The charts were enormously helpful in that regard, but they also introduced a whole new set of facts.  I learned doctors' opinions of me as a person (not just as a patient), as well as the degree of surveillance I had undergone while in the hospital.  I also learned how family members did or did not support me in my quest for healing.  (Again, family myths were destroyed).   The lesson is that documents are rarely simple or easy.  They may verify dates or other facts, but they will complicate others.  In other words, they contribute to the adversarial, dialogic process described earlier on this site.  They do not resolve it.

Consider this for your own writing.  How might your old diary complicate your current memory?  How might your medical charts reveal family politics you had never before considered?  If you find the obituary for a loved one, will it reveal something you did not know?  Did your (now divorced) parents videotape their wedding?  Is it strange to see their early romance documented on video?  Does this complicate your understanding of their relationship?  Look at documents as a way to confront difficult memories, truths, and lies.  They are rich sources of information, inspiration, and personal growth.  And they can help you along in the writing process.

The patterning of human behavior is key to the concept that the study of the spatial arrangement of artifacts can be used to infer the behavior from which they result.  Because of this, the spatial context of artifacts, including their relationship with the natural environment, is more important than the artifact itself.  Removing an artifact from its context destroys much of its potential to help reconstruct human behavior.  -From Forensic Taphonomy: the Postmortem Fate of Human Remains by William Haglund and Marcella Sorg

In other words, context is everything.  Context is all you have. 

What does this mean for creative writing?

Let's say your character writes her former lover to confess that she never got over him - that she walks past his downtown apartment every morning, dreams and fantasizes about him, wonders about his life.   

Now, imagine she mails this letter knowing that her former lover is married.  This certainly changes the emotional, psychological, and moral nuances of the story.   

What happens if this man is unhappily married?  Does it matter if the woman is married, too?  What if their affair began - and ended - while both were already engaged?

Context, however, can be more far-reaching and broad.  Imagine  the lovers live in a culture where adulterers are punished by stoning.  The letter suddenly takes on a dual nature - as criminal and personal confession.  The saliva on the stamp and seal are samples of DNA for the court.  And the mailing is (possibly) an act of marital and literal suicide. 

Or imagine bombs falling on the city, strict police curfews, massive unemployment, terrorist attacks.  This certainly changes the context for love.  What if the woman is part of a resistance movement?  And the man is not?   

The facts (events, characters, place) do not create the whole story.  Rather, conflict and meaning arise from the resonance between context and facts.  This will be the theme for the next series of posts, about forensic archaeology, taphonomy, and context.

Fragment from my final manuscript for Antioch/unpublish book, Last Seen:

When archaeologists excavated the Sutton Hoo burial mounds near Suffolk, England, they started with the smaller barrows. Though they predicted the biggest mound was most important – and likely contained the most valuable artifacts – they dug the smaller ones first as a way to figure out the structures; to find an excavation process that would minimize damage and mistakes. Inside the small mounds they found bone fragments, the decayed remains of a coffin, and corroded pieces of metal with the imprints of tapestries long since rotted away.

Imagine the pressure of the soil, the weight of time, that it can push fabric into metal, like a stamp.

Before digging into the large mound, they built timber terracing to keep it from collapsing, and each layer was worked by hand, the soil brushed gently away. Deep inside – just deep enough so robbers missed the treasure more than once – they found clench nails held still for hundreds of years, and surrounding the nails, a black dust. Nails and black dust were all the archaeologists needed. When the sand was completely removed, the imprint of an entire ship was revealed, as individual as a fingerprint. From this, they drew plans and reconstructed the ship.

- Fragment from my unpublished book, Last Seen

Writers - especially creative nonfiction writers - sometimes need to excavate the smaller barrows first.  And in this sense, context becomes a kind of strategy - something we use to reimagine meaning and restructure narrative arcs. 

For example, I once wrote an essay about a lover who overdosed on heroin.  I knew he was shooting up when we were dating, but I had never really dealt with my feelings surrounding his abuse - his reasons for doing it, the way it tore us apart, my own complicity.  Where to begin? 

I did not begin with the quality and character of our relationship.  I did not begin with my grief.  Or my guilt.  Or the heroin.  I began with sweet, sensual details, the things that made me smile when I remembered him.  And when I was ready, I moved into the sensuality of the heroin.  And then the grief.  Later, my complicity and guilt.  As I moved through these emotional contexts, the narrative changed - structurally, emotionally, psychologically.  The context was quite literally changing the facts. 

In other words, context is not something that exists permanently or statically.  It shifts and settles like sediment.  And when it shifts, your memories shift along with it.   

But unlike a document, the soil of an archaeological site can be interpreted only once in the state in which it is found. The very process of excavation destroys a site forever ... - from the Smithsonian (click text to visit site)

Recently, a friend confessed that her memoirs had replaced her actual memories - her original impressions, images, interpretations, and emotions overwritten by the revisions stored on her laptop hard drive.  Notebook scribbles, structured paragraphs, aestheticized dialogue. These are her reality now. 

"I will be telling a story," she said. "And my husband will stop me.  That is not what happened, he will say.  That is what you wrote."

This is not to say her memoirs lie.  Rather, it points to the ways in which essays are shaped - formally, aesthetically, emotionally, and otherwise.  Creative nonfiction writers do not merely retrieve and record the artifacts of their lives, digging them out from the sediment and arranging them for display.  They imbue them with meaning.  In order to create that meaning, they reshape the emotional, psychological, or temporal contexts.  Subtle as this process may be, it is also extremely powerful. 

But something even more fundamental - more powerful - is revealed by my friend's story.  When original memories are replaced by our crafted ones, what does this mean?  Just like in archaeology, the site is destroyed by our own digging.  Forever altered. 

This is not necessarily a bad thing.  Even without writing, our memories are reshaped all the time.  As we change and mature, our memories change, too - in nuance, emotional tenor, intensity.  But the fact that we can destroy our own dig sites does imply a certain ethical responsibility - to both ourselves and others.  Dig sites must be destroyed for some purpose - to ask important questions or discover a long-hidden truth (whether that be personal, social, political, historical, or aesthetic.)   

If we can do this, then all our lost memories will be worth it.

Although most mainstream nonfiction writers do not stray from the territory of personal experience, many have made leaps into a more speculative realm - weaving historical, social, and scientific research into the text.  Albert Goldbarth, Luc Sante, and David Ulin come immediately to mind.

This is different from personal research - when writers read old diary entries or ask their mothers about childhood memories.  Here, meaning is not located solely within the personal, but in the nexus between scientific and personal truth, memory and forensic examination.  I aspire to this in my own work, often reading medical textbooks, corresponding with scientists, or looking at crime scene photographs.  It is surprising how everything connects, how much richer experience becomes when examined in this speculative mode.

For the next series of posts, I want to focus on this process.  Expect a post tomorrow about expert witnesses in criminal trials, creative writing, and the poetic imagination.

In criminal trials, expert witnesses provide scientific, medical, or other opinions based on the available evidence.  For example, the defense might retain a forensic pathologist to review state autopsy findings and formulate an alternative - and credible - theory for cause of death.   

In the case of Nathaniel Abraham, defense attorneys used a forensic psychiatrist to prove that Abraham (only 11 at the time of his crime) could not have appreciated the consequences of his actions:

Defense psychiatrist Gerald Shiener ... testified that children — particularly Abraham — are not small adults and cannot fully appreciate the consequences of their actions and unanticipated results. In other words, Shiener said, Abraham could not have intended to shoot Greene because, as the boy said in his statement to police, he was shooting at trees and did not realize that others could still be hit with a bullet. Shiener maintained that 11-year-olds like Abraham cannot form the intent for an adult crime because they because they cannot plan for the future the way adults can. (Robinson, Court TV)

This makes sense.  It is difficult to imagine any child mature enough to consider all possible consequences.   

On the other hand, specific evidence from the Abraham case seemed to indicate the opposite.  The prosecution presented a tough cross-examination:

... prosecutor Lisa Halushka confronted Shiener with a state psychiatrist's report on Abraham. According to this expert, Abraham said his family had told him not to play with guns because someone could get hurt. However, Abraham allegedly told this psychiatrist, he didn't listen to his relatives because he didn't want to.

Halushka also pointed out to Shiener that Abraham indicated in his police statement that he ran away after firing the gun and hid it, suggesting that he knew he had done something wrong and was attempting a cover-up. (Robinson, Court TV)

Shiener countered that any child would attempt to stay out of trouble.  According to him, it is inherently childish to run away and hide the gun.  Avoiding punishment is not the same thing as understanding consequences.

And so the case went.  Everything turned on subtle, psychological distinctions, the line between childhood and adulthood, the question of whether children can - or do - ever think like adults.  It was a kind of poetry - a refusal to accept facts at face value, a blurring of lines, a constant re-interpretation (and recontextualization) of evidence.

I love the way facts can be twisted and turned just by asking different questions or focusing on different details.  As Henry David Thoreau wrote, It is not what you look at that matters, it's what you see. 

The expert witness in creative nonfiction is different in at least one important sense. She is not present and usually does not speak in her own voice (except for direct quotations).  There is no opposing legal team to cross-examine the witnesses we choose.  No questioning.  Or is there?  The next post will discuss research and the poetic imagination - how a dialogic, adversarial process, combined with expert testimony, can create richly nuanced texts.   I will wrestle with questions such as how do we know when to use research? and how can we cross-examine our witnesses?

References:

Robinson, B. Psychiatrist's analysis of 13-year-old murder defendant challenged. CourtTV Online.  Retrieved April 11, 2004, from http://www.courttv.com/archive/trials/abraham/110599_am_ctv.html.

How do you know when you need research?

Memoirs (and often, personal essays) use the same techniques as fiction and poetry  - dialogue, metaphor, musicality, characterization, objective correlative, narrative arc, etc.   And since memoirs and essays are often based on personal experiences, they use familiar settings and characters. For these and other reasons, it can sometimes seem strange to use research as part of the writing process.  Maybe even stranger to include it in the final product.

For me, research is not only essential, it is my inspiration.  It fuels my work, ignites my curiosity, and helps me reach out beyond my private experiences.  Once, while writing an essay about wireless technology, I became interested in the effect of remote controls, cell phones, and RFID on my sense of touch.  I wondered if senses could fade without use, and if intimacy might mean something else in the brave new world around the corner.  I began to research experiments on touch, as well as new developments in RFID.  This led to a deeper interest in the overall implications of RFID on privacy, architecture, and the urban experience.  Which led to an interest in security architectures.  The research has led me to new and unfamiliar terrain, and yet, I remain grounded in personal experience.  As I research, I write down intuitive connections between abstract questions and concrete memories and details.  It is as if my left and right brain are whispering back and forth, and I am listening in.  So in my case, the answer is that I always need research.  My process would not be the same without it.

But what about when you start with experience?  When your process is not initially inspired by research? 

When I was a kid, I watched my grandmother die slowly from eight tumors in her brain.  At night, she would scream about the window above her bed, demanding to know whether the latch was locked.  She believed her spirit could not escape through a sealed window, that her ghost would be trapped here on earth for all eternity.  She swatted invisible insects, yelled names, then gagged on her own spit.  Her jaw twisted as she lost control of her facial muscles.  Later, she was forced into the hospital, where nurses used a small vacuum to clean spit from her mouth and throat.

I wanted to tell her story, but cancer had become the ultimate cliche.  How could I find a way to make the experience meaningful?  How could I relate it to something outside our family?  Research.  I learned about the areas of the brain her tumors destroyed - their functions and pathologies, what happens when they fail.  These biological processes led to questions about nerves and cells, which led me to nutrition, and back to the strange foods grandma cooked in her rural house - right on the edge of several farms.  Suddenly, everything connected.  Probably only half of this research made it into the essay, but I needed it all for the process. 

So how do you know when to do this?  When your story is too insular or familiar. When you want it to mean more than it already does.  When you want it to expand.  When you suspect the story points somewhere else - somewhere unexpected. When you have questions that are not answered by just the facts. 

But using research is not the same as using an expert witness.  The expert witness actually appears in the writing - not just in the process.  This will be the subject for the next post.

One of the most fascinating aspects of criminal trials is that - with the exception of opening and closing arguments - lawyers do not create narrative arcs.  Connections and threads must be brought out through questions - not through expository speeches or explanations.  Lawyers are not allowed to turn to the jury and say, See how this testimony relates to the medical evidence?  At least not during the trial.  They can make connections during closing arguments, but even those are very limited in scope.  It is the jury that writes the narrative - figuring out how all the forensic evidence, witness testimony, and documents connect. 

Writers can invite a similar transaction from their readers, by creating implicit rather than explicit connections.

The most obvious example is the collage or snapshot essay, in which sections or fragments are arranged in order to create surprising juxtapositions.  In my own work, I have been known to quote fragments (with proper citation, of course) from my medical charts, news stories, letters, and scientific papers with no exposition or explanation at all.  I like to allow the juxtaposition to do the work, to allow the reader to say, oh, I see how this connects ... This also allows the expert witness to speak for herself, in her own voice (although, one could argue that context and juxtaposition change the voice, too.)

But these kinds of implicit connections can be made in traditional, linear essays as well.  In his book, American Ground, William Langewiesche presents evidence from various expert witnesses while still leaving room for readers to transact.  He does not write long passages of exposition interpreting all the facts or telling readers how to react.  Low Life by Luc Sante achieves something similar.  (And by the way, there are many examples where exactly the opposite approach is absolutely stunning - such as John Berger's The Shape of a Pocket.  This web site is simply exploring an approach that has been ignored or poorly defined by critics and academics.)

Writers walk a fine line, though, when they allow readers to create the story.  On the one hand, everything - every image, every detail, every bit of research - must be exquisitely ordered and controlled, in order to create a cohesive whole.  On the other, enough space must be left for speculation - for the reader to be complicit in the creation of the story.   The writer must be willing to let go once the essay or book is released into the world.  And this is what the next post will explore - along with some examples of ideas mentioned above.

example number one -  an analysis of The Enemy by Rafael Campo (excerpted and pared down from a longer paper I wrote a few years ago)

Most of the witnesses to the attacks on September 11, 2001, watched at a distance, through the lenses of professional and amateur cameras on television, complete with music and graphics, pundits and eyewitness descriptions.  The footage of the falling towers was replayed over and over as if history were a scratched record that kept skipping back. Within days, the hijackers were identified, and the Bush Administration was asking for an unprecedented expansion of surveillance powers.

Americans were witnessing a second historic event: the introduction and passage of the USA PATRIOT Act. The American Civil Liberties Unions immediately voiced concern over the PATRIOT Act’s proposed powers in the pamphlet Insatiable Appetite: The Government’s Demand for New and Unnecessary Powers After 9-11:

It expands the authority of the government in both terrorism and non-terror investigations to conduct so-called “sneak and peek” or “black bag” secret searches, which do not require notification of the subject of the search.

It grants the FBI – and under new information sharing provisions, many other law enforcement and intelligence agencies – broad access to highly personal medical, financial, mental health and student records with only the most minimal judicial oversight.

It permits law enforcement agents to investigate American citizens for criminal matters without establishing probable cause based on an assertion that the investigation is for “intelligence purposes.”

It puts the CIA firmly back in the historically abusive business of spying on Americans by giving the Director of Central Intelligence broad authority to target intelligence surveillance in the United States.

It contains an overbroad definition of “domestic terrorism.”  The new definition is so vague that the government could designate lawful advocacy groups – such as Operation Rescue or Greenpeace – as terrorists and subject them to invasive surveillance, wire-tapping, and harassment and then criminally penalize them for what had been constitutionally protected political advocacy.  (ACLU 8)

Rafael Campo watched the attacks on television and - with our rapidly changing political landscape in mind - wrote a poem about the process of witnessing.  The Enemy was published in The Nation several months after the attacks:

The buildings' wounds are what I can't forget; though nothing could absorb my sense of loss, I stared into their blackness, what was not

supposed to be there, billowing of soot
and ragged maw of splintered steel, glass.
The buildings' wounds are what I can't forget,

the people dropping past them, fleeting spots
approaching death as if concerned with grace.
I stared into the blackness, what was not

inhuman, since by men's hands they were wrought;
reflected on the TV's screen, my face
upon the building's wounds.  I can't forget

this rage, I don't know what to do with it--
it's in my nightmares, towers, plumes of dust,
a staring in the blackness.  What was not

conceivable is now our every thought:
We fear the enemy is all of us.
The building's wounds are what I can't forget.
I stared into their blackness, what was not.
(Campo 45)

Campo’s villanelle is set up as a kind of internal argument, with the first line – “The buildings wounds are what I can’t forget” – defining his problem.  He cannot forget the image of the buildings, and he cannot find an image to “absorb his sense of loss.”  The third line deepens the dilemma because it ends the stanza with a negation, an anti-image: “what was not.”  This could be read as denial or just an overwhelming sense of loss, but it also engages with the creative process.  As an anti-image, “what was not” implies that there is no image that can move the poet past those gaping holes in the towers.  And indeed, the poem turns to the towers again in the beginning of the second stanza. 

The second stanza affirms the struggle of the first.  Campo has not moved past the image of the burning towers.  But even as he evokes the towers, he does not attempt to depict or describe them. Rather, he gives us the “billowing of soot/ and ragged maw of splintered steel, glass.”  In other words, he is not attempting direct aestheticization.

He is also aware that he has witnessed this event at a distance.  Missing are the ambulance sirens, shattered windows, dust handprints on jacket and briefcase, soot and smoke staining the fibers of a wool suit, the sense of immediate danger.  So he stays with the materials of the building, evoking just enough to flash the images in our minds.   He then reaffirms his inability to forget the wounds, with the repetition of the first line - a particularly powerful image when one realizes that the poet is also a doctor.  He seems to humanize the towers as patients he can heal.  And this time, the line is not contained with a period.  It ends with a comma, and the poem begins to move into the human dimension of the tragedy. 

In the fourth stanza, he mentions the television screen for the first time – the screen upon which his face is “reflected.”  Is he now seeing himself in the tragedy?  Possibly, but there are many layers of meaning here.  He has created a meta-image, or an image of the poet as he watches.  More specifically, he reminds us that he is watching television, thus provoking questions about his distance, and more importantly, about the filters though which he has witnessed.  It is also an image of Campo as he applies an aesthetic form to the burning towers, his face (his poetic voice) superimposed on the images.  He is not speaking from within this tragedy, but from outside it.

Campo then moves into a more emotional landscape, admitting his rage: “this rage.  I don’t know what to do with it -- / it’s in my nightmares . . .”  It is no longer the towers he cannot forget, but rather, his rage.   Campo also connects himself to the larger culture when he invokes we for the first time:  “We fear the enemy is all of us.”   The implication is significant, given the political climate in the aftermath of the attacks.  At a September 26, 2001, press briefing, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer was confronted with the question of domestic dissent: 

Q As Commander-In-Chief, what was the President's reaction to television's Bill Maher, in his announcement that members of our Armed Forces who deal with missiles are cowards, while the armed terrorists who killed 6,000 unarmed are not cowards, for which Maher was briefly moved off a Washington television station? [ . . . ]

MR. FLEISCHER: I'm aware of the press reports about what he said. I have not seen the actual transcript of the show itself. But assuming the press reports are right, it's a terrible thing to say, and it unfortunate. And that's why -- there was an earlier question about has the President said anything to people in his own party -- they're reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do. This is not a time for remarks like that; there never is. (White House Press Secretary)

Campo succeeds in capturing all of these complex processes by doing the very thing he says he cannot:  containing them inside a form.  Free or open verse could not have contained them the way the villanelle does, with its repetition and rhyme.  The poem is not so much about the images, or the media, or the political climate, as it is about the process of witnessing – or more specifically, witnessing as an artist. The repetition of lines and images recalls the relentless media footage of jets speeding toward and crashing into the towers, while the resolution of the form implies a certain inevitability and vertical movement – a fateful fall.  It manages to evoke September 11th without being merely mimetic or representational.  The poetic form is not used as a metaphor for the towers, but is actually subject to the same structural “defects” and “weaknesses” – the poem’s support beams break and burn.  And just as the structural defects of the towers allowed them to stand at all – the lighter beams, the use of gypsum instead of concrete in the escape stairwells, the skeletal ribs used as support – so do the “imperfect” lines of Campo’s poem give it power and force.  [ ... ]

this section of the paper continues with a discussion of form and structure - you get the idea ...

another excerpt from my earlier writings about 9/11 art

Art Spiegelman did not witness the attack on New York from a distance.  He lives one mile from where the World Trade Center once stood, and was on his way to vote in the mayoral primaries when he heard the first plane crash into the towers.  This was his landscape, his neighborhood, and he was an eyewitness.  Unlike Campo, his experience was not mediated by television.  And yet, when he realized he had three days to create a new cover for the New Yorker (where his wife, who was with him that morning, is the covers editor), he also turned to the images of the towers, and to process.  As he wrote in 110 Stories: New York Writes After September 11th:

I tried to juxtapose the deadly blackness of the event with the wondrous crystalline blue sky that underscored the surrealism of that bleak day.  I sketched the towers, shrouded in black as if by a Christo in mourning.  They floated against a tranquil Magritte sky above a Lower Manhattan cityscape.  But Surrealism was inadequate to that moment, and the vividness of the color seemed to obscenely mock the blackness at the heart of the picture.  I scanned the sketch into my computer, and gradually desaturated and darkened the color of the sky and cityscape until my screen was virtually black.  Only when my picture all but disappeared did it accurately reflect the painful new emptiness I and many others needed to see.  (Spiegelman 286)

He envisioned the towers covered by a black cloth, standing against the backdrop of brilliant blue sky, but in the end, he created an image of almost complete blackness, much as Rafael Campo did in The Enemy.  His subject, it turned out, was not the towers, or even the attacks, but the process of understanding their collapse - and the process of creating art from that understanding.  He wasn’t sure what was appropriate (or even possible) aesthetically.  His image appeared on the September 24, 2001, cover. 

Figure 3 (not posted here) Art Spiegelman. September 24, 2001, New Yorker cover (left) and cover illustration for 110 Stories: New York Writes After September 11th, 2002.

The towers in this picture are not representations of buildings, but of loss itself, and the picture as a whole can be seen as a representation of artistic process in the aftermath of 9-11.  The towers are barely present, shapes you must strain to see - reflecting the process of many New Yorkers, as they imagine ghost towers in the skyline.  In its blackness, Spiegelman's picture seems to say that there is no way to give form to this loss - no art that can do it. 

When Spiegelman later designed the cover for 110 Stories, he teetered between representation and abstraction.  He had, in fact, returned to the original image he intended for the New Yorker, before he blackened it.  The towers are depicted as ghostly shapes, the only hint of their shape in the drape of a black cloth.  The empty space peeking out from below the Christo-like cloths reminds us that this is an illusion, and the image seems to be saying something about the inability of art to completely retrieve what was lost.  The rest of the skyline has reappeared, clear and unscathed, but the towers are still missing.  And yet, there is hope in the image, a kind of resolution.  Art has come back from the blackness:

The afterimage of the towers lingers, insisting on its presence through the blackness.  But now, in the months of “new normalcy” that have followed, the rescue and salvage operation that continues near my front stoop has allowed me the luxury of trying to rescue and salvage my first image.  I’ve “sandblasted” and scrubbed my first sketch and now, with some distance, that blue sky – on the cover of this book – seems at least a little more possible. (Spiegelman 286)

In choosing to reference Christo in his 110 Stories cover, Spiegelman is challenging the public (and other artists) to find the aesthetic inside 9-11. Christo is known for draping buildings and other structures – natural and manmade – with fabric in order to encourage people to transact with them on an aesthetic level – to see the shapes and play of light, to think about how one normally sees (or fails to see) these same spaces and structures.  By covering the missing towers with a Christo-like cape, Spiegelman is challenging us to think about our relationship with the towers and what they mean to us.  In so doing, we can uncover an aesthetic dimension to the attacks as well.

Sources:

Spiegelman, Art. "Re:Covers." 110 Stories: New York Writes After September 11. Ed. Ulrich Baer. New York: New York University Press, 2002.

ps: I hear something similar happens in Fahrenheit 9/11 - that Michael Moore never shows the planes crashing into the towers.  Instead, he shows a blank screen, with audio only. I have not seen the movie, but I suspect he is continuing an already-established tradition in 9/11 art.  As soon as I see the film, I will post about it on evidentiary:alchemy.

Good stories do not rely solely on evidence or fascinating characters.  They must be told in a compelling way, with an irresistable voice.  Look at what happened to the Scott Peterson murder trial, when Chief Deputy District Attorney Birgit Fladager decided to join her colleagues in court.  Defense Attorney Mark Geragos lost his opportunities for theatrics, the witnesses seemed more credible, and the prosecution case suddenly seemed more persuasive: 

Birgit Fladager, a chief deputy district attorney, worked on the case from the start, but did not attend the trial regularly until several weeks in and did not question a witness until Sept. 13 ...

Before Fladager took a seat at the prosecution table, criminal defense lawyer Paula Canny observed, "the energy often felt flat and Geragos absolutely ruled that courtroom, and when she came in, it sort of restored the balance a little bit."

"She commands a lot of presence in the courtroom and speaks with conviction and is very organized. She didn't look scared and sometimes, Harris and Distaso look nervous," she said ...

Former San Francisco prosecutor Jim Hammer said that after Fladager's arrival, Geragos' "running comedy hour routine" ended ...

(Ryan, 2004)

The key words here are that she didn't look scared.  Have you ever read a story or essay in which the author seemed afraid of her own characters, memories, or plot?  In which it seemed the author held back, failing to ask the right questions - or failing to ask questions at all?  When an author is confident in her process, voice, and self, it will show in her characters as well.  The story will open up, and suddenly new possibilities will bloom.  Fladager believed in her evidence, believed in her case, and believed in her skills as a prosecutor. 

This is especially important in creative nonfiction, when authors often explore the dark and dusty corners of their own memories.   If we can all walk into the courtroom like Fladager, our writing will make the case.

Ryan, Harriet. (2004). Prosecutors in Scott Peterson Trial Turn Pitiful Start Ino Powerful Finale. Court TV..  Available: http://www.courttv.com/trials/peterson/100604_ctv.html

When I was a student in Antioch's MFA program, I facilitated an online conference called Process, Process, Process.  It was a space for writers to explore something other than product for a change - a welcome relief from workshops and publication obsession.  We talked about everything from the types of pens we like to use (and why) to how the climate in which we grew up affected our thinking (and why).  Social class, race, marital status, educational background, parenthood, abuse, and drugs are just a few of the rich subjects we explored.  One day, a student asked whether it might be destructive to focus so much on process.  She worried that artists and writers could become too self-conscious and somehow constrict the natural flow.

In other words, can we ever have too much process?

This month, I will explore the case of Coral Eugene Watts, and how due process can sometimes lead to unintended consequences: in this case, a confessed serial killer almost being set free.  Were it not for his first-degree murder conviction in Michigan last week, Watts would be out on the streets in under one year, released from a Texas prison with credits for good behavior.  Yes, you read that right.  Texas, the death penalty capitol of the world, was about to release a serial killer on good behavior. 

So what can this tell about process?  And about writing?

My previous post began and ended with questions.  Can there ever be too much process?   And what can the case of Coral Eugene Watts teach us about writing?   

Examine closely the case of Coral Eugene Watts, and you will see what happens when process is given priority over truth - when balance is lost, and process becomes all-important.  While a strong, rigorous process can reveal hidden truths, it can just as easily distract and mislead.  Sometimes, it can even become an excuse.  Of course, our justice system has a duty to ensure due process, but we can still use this case as a metaphor for creative process gone awry. 

Here is a brief summary of the case:

In 1982, Coral Eugene Watts struck a plea deal with Texas prosecutors and was handed a 60-year sentence for burglary with intent to murder.  In a brutal assault, he had strangled Lori Lister in the parking lot of her apartment building and dragged her upstairs to her door.  Once inside, he strangled her roommate, Melinda Aguilar, and tied her hands behind her back with closet hangers.  After laying Melinda's limp body on her bed, he proceeded to fill the bathtub - in preparation for drownings.  Little did he know, Melinda was only pretending to be unconscious; she was actually plotting her escape. 

Had Melinda not leapt - hands still tied behind her back - from her second-story apartment balcony and cried for help, Watts would have drowned both her and Lori. 

During questioning for the Lister/Aguilar attacks, Watts revealed that he had killed up to 80 other people.   But even still, prosecutors lacked the evidence to convict him for those murders.  They wanted closure, and Watts would only confess under an immunity agreement.   As part of a plea bargain, Watts was granted immunity in 12 murder cases - 11 in Texas and 1 in Michigan.  He led them to several bodies and revealed how his victims were killed.   

In 1989, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reviewed Watts' case.  At issue was whether the judge had failed to inform Watts that the bathtub was construed as a "lethal weapon" (because of his plan to drown Lori and Melinda).  Watts' lawyer argued that his client was never informed and therefore should not be considered a violent offender.  The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals agreed, and as a result, Coral was reclassified - unbelievably - as a nonviolent inmate.  This allowed him to earn "good time" credits, knocking 2-3 days off for every day served.   Instead of serving 60 years, he would serve only 22.

In other words, a confessed serial killer would be released early for good behavior.  It should also be noted, this man promised to kill again.

Prosecutors scrambled to find a way to keep him in jail, and he was eventually charged, tried, and convicted for the murder of Helen Dutcher.  For this he will serve life in prison without the possibility of parole.   Were he not convicted in that case, he would walk free in May 2006. 

So what we have here is a case where the truth - that this man was a confessed serial killer who promised to kill again - was subservient to process.  It was more important that Watts be informed about the bathtub's status as "lethal weapon" than that he had confessed to brutally murdering 12 women (and by his own count, had killed even more.)

Sometimes, when I am writing, I have a hard time letting go of process.  I want to work through my ideas in a rigorous, forensic, trial-like way.  But how many truths are lost when the process is too strict?  Is there a way to balance the need for due process with the need for truth?   

Note: the following text contains grammatical and other errors.  This is how the original, 29-page transcript appears.  In order to preserve the document's integrity, no corrections have been made. 

Taped Statement
Statement Of: Fred J. Neulander
Date:  11-2-94
Time: 3:20 AM
Location:  Cherry Hill Police Department Investigative Division
Interviewers: Detective Joseph Vitarelli and Detective John S. Long of the Cherry Hill Police Department Investigative Division
In Presence Of: 

Speech patterns are hard to capture in writing, but they can become powerful pieces of "evidence" all their own.  What does this snippet from the interrogation of Rabbi Fred Neulander reveal? The context: His wife has been brutally murdered, bludgeoned to death inside the couple's home.  Rabbi Neulander found his wife's bloody body and called 911.  This fragment comes from his interrogation (see more in my previous post).

A. I couldn't tell you.  Because when I got home I dialed 911 and I, I just kept saying what do I do?  Should I cover her should, I asked the question should I touch her.  And I and the woman on the other end of the line said just wait for the officer, wait for the officer, wait for the officer. So I didn't touch her.  But I did move out to the foyer and quite frankly I, I, I, I couldn't go into the room.   I, I looked once, and ah, I was, it was so horrible I just couldn't stay in the room so I stayed in the foyer and then I opened the door and then went outside I was, and I was on the portable phone and I you know, I, I don't know which officer it was but he told me, who would do this? Isolating the outside so I didn't look for anything.

The first thing I notice is how he starts and stalls, often stuttering and repeating. 

The repetitions are especially interesting:

"I,I"

"I, I, I, I"

"wait for the officer, wait for the officer, wait for the officer"

"I was, and I was"

Neulander can explain the repetitions, in part, by nerves.  Who wouldn't feel squeamish during a police interrogation?  Also, this interrogation took place at 3:20 AM.  Mr. Neulander is exhausted and an emotional wreck.  Presumably, anyway.  (A jury eventually convicted him of hiring two men to murder his wife, so it is impossible to know how he actually felt about her death.  Even still, I imagine the feelings were unbearable - guilt, regret, sadness at the loss he caused.  Or worse - happiness at what he had done. Relief that is was over.)

What else do the repetitions show?  I find it interesting that he repeats "I" so many times throughout this answer and others.  Mr. Neulander consistently brings the focus back to himself and his actions - as if he is the center of the story.  Unsure how to characterize his actions, he hesitates to describe what he did.  He never describes what he saw - at least not in any detail.  Only that he could not stand to look, and that it was "horrible."

In this sense, his speech patterns reveal just as much as - if not more than - his actual words.  The most vivid images for Mr. Neulander are of himself.  It is as if he consciously frames his actions a particular way.  Police need to sniff out crucial details and clues about the crime scene, but Mr. Neulander has nothing to give.  Except himself. 

Which may tip his hand.  Does Mr. Neulander believe he is the subject of the interrogation?  If so, why?  This does not necessarily betray guilt, since any reasonable person could feel like he's under attack during an interrogation.  And in husband-wife murder cases, police always suspect the spouse. (Sadly, most female murder victims are killed by a partner or spouse. The statistics are different for men, but of course, police watch spouses closely during investigations.)

Maybe it simply shows how self-centered he is.  Which, when you think about it, reveals more than just his character.  Even in the face of his wife's brutal bludgeoning, he turns the spotlight on himself.    It was as if he was unmoved - unshaken.

Here is another fact, not entirely clear in the interrogation:  Mr. Neulander never touched his dead wife.  He never embraced her, kissed her, held her, or checked to see if she was still alive.  Mr. Neulander's own son noticed this and found it disgusting.  Most - though not all - husbands would do anything to save their wives - CPR, or desperate pleas to please not die.  They would rush to her side.  Stroke her hair, hold her hand, lean over her and whisper loving words.  Especially if she were suffering the unbearable pains of a beating. 

But Mr. Neulander simply called 911 and asked if he should touch her.  He never asked how he might adminster CPR or check for a pulse.  Perhaps he worried about spattering blood onto his clothes.  Or perhaps he did not want to save her at all.  Some even believed he had scripted his 911 call, just so he could craft an excuse.  But they told me not to touch her.

Also remember: This man is a rabbi.  Surely, he has comforted many members of his synagogue, as they faced death - either their own demise, or that of a loved one.  He has handled funerals.  He has been present at the time of death - never pretty.   Would a religious leader respond this way to death? 

wait for the officer, wait for the officer, wait for the officer

Here is a repetition that focuses on someone else - but even this is self-referential.  Mr. Neulander  reiterates what he was told to do.  I am not certain whether the 911 dispatcher actually repeated this phrase, but I suspect not.   This seems to be something Mr. Neulander needs to emphasize.  If he can make it clear he was just doing what he was told, then his actions seem justified somehow. 

Of course, an interrogation is not the normal way to write dialogue.  Most characters engage in everyday conversation.  But the best dialogue becomes a kind of interrogation - advancing the plot, revealing hidden motivations, rounding out character.  Consider how speech patterns can infuse your dialogue with all of these things - how the way words are spoken transforms their meanings. 

The Sealed, Empty Envelope and "Bathroom Man"

Two weeks before Carol Neulander was murdered, she welcomed a stranger into the house, a man delivering a sealed envelope for her husband, Rabbi Neulander.   

The couple's daughter, Rebecca Neulander-Rockoff, was chatting on the phone with her mother when the man showed up.  According to her testimony, her mother did not seem concerned. 

"There's somebody here, I shouldn't be surprised," Carol said.  "Daddy told me to expect him.   But the very strange thing is he needs to use the bathroom." (1)

Rebecca nicknamed the stranger "bathroom man."

Neither woman knew who "bathroom man" really was: hired killer Len Jenoff, a recovering alcoholic, private investigator, & pathological liar who had sought spiritual advice from Rabbi Neulander.  According to Jenoff, the Rabbi offered him $30,000 to kill Carol Neulander and make it look like a robbery.   

During Jenoff's first visit to the house - when he asked to use the bathroom - he couldn't find Carol's pocketbook, so he aborted his plans to have his accomplice rush in and smash her skull with a lead pipe.   Instead, he simply dropped off an envelope and left.

Strange thing was, the envelope was empty.

According to Jenoff's testimony, Rabbi Neulander threatened to kill him if he failed to finish the job.  "His face was red, his eyebrows were raised, and he was absolutely furious ... You better do it or you'll be dead.  And if you don't believe me, just try me." (2) 

Two weeks later, "bathroom man" appeared at the Neulander home a second time.  Rebecca was on the phone with Carol once again.  Carol graciously opened the door.   

It was the last time mother and daughter would ever speak.  Only a few minutes later, Jenoff struck the back of Carol's head with his lead pipe, and she cried out, "Why, why, why" as she fell.

But remember the Rabbi's interrogation?  One particular moment stands out, when he denied knowledge of any deliveries scheduled for the night of the murder:

JL: Now, earlier this evening while we were talking in the rescue vehicle in front of your house there was mentioned that um there was somebody was suppose to make some deliveries to your house for you.  Are you familiar with that?

A. I don't remember anything like that.  I know because I don't want people in the house.  Um, I have a little enough privacy and ah, you know if, if deliveries are made, um, I would want them to be at the .... Deliveries are made where I don't.  Sometimes from the Cooper Hospital.  Um and sometimes from the mail.  Um, but I. You know I don't people around and ah, um, this I had, I was, I was never have, You know said I want you I want you to drop something off. A delivery.  I don't want to confound you.  It wasn't until tonight that something was said.  I don't know when it happened.  Maybe back at Carol was just tryging to protect the fact that she (inaudible) I, I, That kind of bewilders me.

Compare Rebecca's testimony to her father's, and you can see how words transform into something more - something almost physical, suspicious as blood spatter.  Words transcend themselves, creating tension, sowing the seeds of doubt and building a case.   The tension between dialogue and action, words and objective correlatives, testimony and physical evidence, invites readers to do more than simply read.

1 from Rebecca's testimony, as reported by Court TV, available: http://courttv.com/trials/neulander/101701_ctv.html
2 from Jenoff's testimony, as reported by Court TV, available: http://courttv.com/trials/neulander/101901_ctv.html

The recent conviction of former WorldCom Chief Executive Bernard J. Ebbers offers an interesting insight into how character - or perhaps personality - can not only color our perceptions of evidence, but can also become evidence on its own.

According to the Wall Street Journal, jurors believed neither Mr. Ebbers nor key prosecution witness Scott Sullivan (who so obviously exchanged his testimony for a lower sentence in his own case):

"[Ebbers] was the man who was in charge.  It's just kind of hard to sit there and think he didn't know what was going on," said Vincent Wright, juror No. 7.  (As quoted in the Wall Street Journal.)

Read that carefully.   The juror did not say: The evidence proved Ebbers guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.  He said:  It is hard to believe he did not do it, because of who he is.  Ebbers, after all, was a notorious micro-manager.   That much was proved at trial.

This is especially important when you know the government had no direct evidence: no emails (Ebbers never used email); no letters; no taped conversations.  All they had was a common-sense notion of what a CEO ought to know, and the word of a not-terribly-reliable snitch.   

Which is not to say the government lacked plenty of good circumstantial evidence. Or that the jurors were wrong.  Heck, I always thought Ebbers was guilty, too.

My point here is simply that character and evidence can sometimes be one and the same. 

Of course, this carries its own dangers.  I will return to this issue later, looking at a series of cases where this changed & failed to change jury decisions. 

I apologize for mentioning the Michael Jackson child molestration trial at all, but the testimony - and the corroborating videos, notes, and audiotapes - are just far too interesting to ignore.  Not because of Michael Jackson.  And not because of the nastiness of the charges.  No, this trial is interesting because it shows the uniquely riveting power of the unreliable narrator.

Take the accuser's mother.  Her story is almost as bizarre as the King of Pop and his thousand noses: false imprisonment at Neverland; threats against her life; constant video surveillance; thugs at her door; head licking.  Her testimony makes her look like a paranoid nutcase.  She claims Michael Jackson held her at Neverland against her will, even though she left and returned on more than one occasion. While "imprisoned," she luxuriated in expensive spa treatments and shopped at exclusive boutiques, all on Jackson's tab.  (If prison feels that good, hell, sign me up.)

Jackson allegedly licked her son's head, but she allowed the two to share a bed in spite of it.  Why?  Because she simply did not believe her own eyes. 

Toss in her history of purgery and welfare fraud, and reasonable doubts begin to blossom.

Then there is the problem of the rebuttal video, made after the infamous "Living with Michael Jackson" documentary made him look like a pedophile creep.  On the tape, the accuser and his mother praise Jackson, even calling him "Daddy Michael."  According to the mother, Jackson thugs scripted the whole video, and she had no choice but to take the starring role.

So who do jurors believe? 

Prosecutors have produced corroborating evidence for almost every one of the mother's claims.  They have surveillance videos, audiotapes, and documents to back up every charge.  Jurors watched video tapes of the accuser's mother as she packed up her apartment to move.  They watched as her daughter looked directly into a camera lens and darted away, obviously afraid.  They listened to audio of Jackson guards.   

On the other hand, the defense has receipts.  The mother says she received a leg wax, but the receipt shows a full body treatment.   Is she minimizing the luxuries in order to look better?

Sometimes, even the corroborating evidence fails to make witnesses credible. (Or put another way: an incredible witness makes the evidence incredible, too.)  When this happens, the tension builds and builds without relief.   I will spend the next couple of posts exploring the unreliable narrator  & corroborating evidence.

Before we dig into the particulars of the Michael Jackson trial, I want to back up and explain what an unreliable narrator is and how it functions as a literary device.   As with anything, more than one definition exists (and the different definitions both illuminate and cloud the subject.)

A few definitions:

• a speaker or voice whose vision or version of the details of a story are consciously or unconsciously deceiving; such a narrator's version is usually subtly undermined by details in the story or the reader's general knowledge of facts outside the story. If, for example, the narrator were to tell you that Columbus was Spanish and that he discovered America in the fourteenth century when his ship the Golden Hind landed on the coast of Florida near present-day Gainesville, you might not trust other things he tells you. www.wwnorton.com/introlit/glossary.htm
• a narrator who misinterprets the story due to prejudice, madness, etc. www.iolani.org/usacad_eng_eng10ssterms_cw9404.htm
• a narrator who tells the story from a biased, erroneous perspective wps.ablongman.com/wps/media/objects/130/133428/glossary.html
• A narrator who is not clear on the plot himself or other characters and therefore is unable to support the views intended by the author.  www.baylorschool.org/academics/english/studentwork/stover/toolbox/fiction.html
• In literature and film, an unreliable narrator is a first-person narrator, the credibility of whose point of view is seriously compromised, possibly by psychological instability or powerful bias. Many novels are narrated by children, whose inexperience makes them inherently unreliable. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, for example, Huck's inexperience leads him to make overly charitable judgments about the characters in the novel; in contrast, Holden Caulfield, in The Catcher in the Rye, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreliable_narrato

Quite a list to contemplate:  inexperience, innocence, ignorance, bias, compromised cognitive or emotional capacity, insanity, deceit, and confusion.  Any one (or more) of these qualities can make a narrator's story unreliable. 

Writers use this device to create tension, raise questions, reveal or illuiminate characters, make statements about the human condition, invite reader participation, and more.   The key to this device: intention.  The writer must know the character is unreliable and use the device for good reason.  (With perhaps the possible exception of a riveting memoir, in which the narrator/writer is obviously unreliable - and does not realize it - but the unreliability somehow illuminates an issue or raises questions.  But even then, pretty tricky.)

The problem with the Michael Jackson case is that so many of the witnesses are unreliable it is impossible to know who - or what - to believe. 

Last week, the mother exercised her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, protecting herself against cross-examination questions about alleged welfare fraud in 2001-2003.   Jurors were informed of her decision.   Since they ultimately decide who is believable and who is not, they can consider this when evaluating her testimony.  If she lied before, will she lie now?  Or more specifically:  If she lied in order to obtain money before, will she lie again for the same reason?  Will she sue Michael Jackson for money in the future?

(On a side note:  This problem of a witness invoking 5th Amendment rights and still being allowed to testify on other matters rings all sorts of ethical & legal alarm bells, at least in my mind.  I will deal with that question in a post later today.  Not that I think Jackson  is innocent.  But I believe trials should use the most rigorous process, with complete integrity.)

But prosecutors have produced corroborating evidence in the form of videos, tape recordings, and eyewitness testimony.  This evidence should make the mother more believable.  Has it?  Can evidence overcome an unreliable narrator?  Should it? 

For example, when the mother says Jackson thugs warned of threats against her life & told her she must move to Brazil for her own safety, she sounds like a paranoid nut.  Until you see evidence that appears to back up her story.

And when she says Jackson co-conspirators followed her children with video cameras, you cannot help but wonder if she exaggerates.  Until you see surveillance video of her daughter on her way to her grandmother's house.  (There are also videos of the mother, as she rides in a car with a Jackson associate. Creepy, to say the least.)

The prosecution has produced corroboration of all sorts: papers signing the children out of school; travel documents; recordings.

But as I have mentioned before, any piece of evidence is open to interpretation.  Just because the prosecution produces evidence does not mean it proves their charges.  Can we trust the story this mother has built up around those videos, recordings, and documents?   What if an alternate interpretation proves just as believable (or unbelievable)? 

And what if another witness - equally unreliable - provides another story for the same pieces of evidence?  Who do we believe when nobody can be believed?

After all, the mother has called her own observations into question more than once:  "I thought it was me.  I thought I was seeing things.  Everybody was asleep," she said, explaining why she let her son sleep with Jackson, even after she witnessed him licking her son's head "over and over."

She thought she was seeing things?  When else was she seeing things?

And she has already invoked her 5th Amendment rights on the welfare fraud allegations.

And there is that famous rebuttal video, in which she praises Michael Jackson (which she now claims was scripted & forced.) 

This kind of tension begs for audience involvement.  We turn it all over in our minds, wonder whether to believe such a witness, and whether the evidence corroborates her story or simply complicates it.  The mother most definitely fits the definition of unreliable narrator: a known liar, possibly paranoid, with possible ulterior motives and a heaping helping of bias (she refuses to acknowledge her own indulgences, shortcomings, and mistakes, which hurts more than it helps.) 

We can use this kind of tension in creative writing, too.  Through the introduction of corroborating & opposing evidence, conflicting interpretations & unreliable narrators/witnesses, we can invite readers into the process.