cover of episode For Brontez Purnell, “Memoir Is Fiction—I Don’t Care What Anyone Says”

For Brontez Purnell, “Memoir Is Fiction—I Don’t Care What Anyone Says”

2024/2/20
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Brontez Purnell: 回忆录对我来说完全是虚构的。为了让女性、男同性恋、有色人种的作品被接受为真相，必须在作品上加上"回忆录"这个词。即使我写回忆录，为了避免被起诉，也必须改变一切。回忆录就是虚构，我不在乎别人怎么说。我和你都可以写下我们生活中的真相，但一旦我们的母亲、兄弟姐妹或书中任何相关的人读到，他们很容易说：你在说什么？事情根本不是那样发生的。这使得我们所说的一切都变成了虚构。所以当我提到诗歌体裁的回忆录时，我是在巧妙地处理回忆录这个非常棘手的问题。 写作时需要保护自己，所以会进行虚构和事实的混合。即使在我所谓的自传体小说中，也有完全是谎言的东西和绝对真实的东西混杂在一起。最终，这并不重要，因为我认为认为虚构故事对人类经验毫无教益，或者回忆录比虚构作品对人类经验的教益要多得多，这是一种愚蠢的想法。 Jeffrey Masters: 作者在回忆录中对艾滋病经历的轻描淡写，与传统回忆录不同。

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Brontez Purnell is a Renaissance man. He’s a musician, a dancer, a filmmaker, and the author of a number of books. His latest is “Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt),” a departure from the traditional memoir form. It's written in verse and playfully embellishes the truth throughout. “Memoir is fiction—I don’t care what anyone says,” Purnell tells The New Yorker Radio Hour’s Jeffrey Masters. “You [or] I could both write down our lives as true as we know it. But the second our mom reads it, or one of our siblings reads it, or anybody else peripherally in the book, they can easily say, ‘What are you talking about? That never happened like that.’ ” Purnell, who came of age in the underground punk scene in Oakland, California, during the early two-thousands, is no stranger to hard knocks, but that doesn’t mean he needs to divulge everything. “If you write about your life, you have to protect the wicked; namely, yourself,” he says. “So there is this game of pulling and punching.”