Art is a Lie that Tells the Truth:

Thoughts on Truth, Lies, and Fiction in Diaries and Journals

Olivia Dresher

I’m attracted to journals, diaries, and notebooks more than any other form of writing. I read them, I write them, I collect them, and I publish them. Those I read and collect include not only published books but also unpublished handwritten journals that my friends have written. I confess that I’ve also peeked into private journals, and I’ve read journal notebooks that I’ve found in the trash. Also, recently a homeless man I encountered in a neighborhood park let me read his journal (he told me that no one had ever read it before).

I’m drawn to all of them: Private journals and public journals. Hidden journals and journals written for publication. A writer’s notebook, a philosopher’s notebook. A journal in the form of poetry. Visual art journals. A journal documenting the events of the day. An old diary of secrets and confessions found in the attic of an abandoned house or in the drawer of an old desk. Journals of the known and the unknown. A diary written in code. Film diaries. A journal that isn’t a sideline to some other project but the work in itself. An historical journal of facts and customs. Contemporary personal journals. A dream journal. A journal spoken into a tape recorder. Diaries that are inherited. Diaries that are destroyed before anyone can peek. On-line journals. Edited journals. Fictionalized diaries. Semi-fictionalized diaries. Novels in diary form.

Though I focus on publishing mainly literary journals and notebooks, I value all writings in the journal and diary form, whether they’re journals and diaries that are contemporary or historical or works of fiction.

The many different kinds of journals, diaries, and notebooks…what do they have in common? What links them? Form is what links them—the fragmented form of writing straight from life, drop-by-drop. This fragmented form thrives on the absence of any pre-established rules or boundary lines. It’s pregnant with possibilities. Anyone can write a diary—a child or an adult, the educated and the uneducated, a traveler or a recluse. And the writing in a diary or journal can range from the mundane to the creative, from petty complaints to profound insights. Journals focus on the tangible or the intangible, on the inner or outer self; they can consist of objective observations or intimate details. The entries in a journal notebook may be long—many, many pages—or as short as one line, or just one word. And journals and diaries can contain truth, lies, fictions, and everything in between.

The directness and intimacy of the journal form is seductive. The form says: Create your own style, write whatever you want, you’re completely free here. The form says: Say it however you want to say it. The form says: Tell the blank page what you can’t tell anyone else, and tell it however you want to tell it—whether several times a day, or once a day, or once a week, or once a month, or as inconsistently as you need to. The form says: Make this your own world, write it down so it won’t disappear. The forms says: The moment matters, your words matter, the thoughts expressed matter—now and tomorrow.

Even a novel in diary form follows this spirit of freedom. Fiction in the form of a diary creates the illusion that it’s the real thing, and within that illusion truth is expressed, as all art is a leap of the imagination.

Because I’m attracted to the diary/journal/notebook form, I’m drawn to both fictional and “real” diaries and journals.

But what is a “real” diary or journal? Is it a notebook which contains personal truths meant only for the eyes of the journal-keeper? What is truth, when journal writers are always selective about what’s written in their notebooks, and sometimes they deliberately censor what they write on the pages? What’s truth, when only a small part of a life ends up on the pages of a diary, in fragments, tiny pieces of the puzzle? What’s truth, when self-deception is something we all fall into, more or less?

Truth is the assumed goal in a journal, but we can never see truth whole or outside of ourselves. Our perceptions are limited and conform to our individual thoughts, memories, and moods. What we perceive is an interpretation, what we perceive is filtered through our prejudices and desires and everything we’ve already experienced. Twenty people witnessing the same event will perceive that event in different ways and write about it differently. Our perceptions aren’t cameras, and words in a journal aren’t undistorted photographs.

So what is truth, and how can truth in a journal be verified? Do we assume and expect that the journal writer is telling us the truth by choosing to write in the diary form? Does “diary” imply truth and secrets, do “truth” and “diary” mean the same thing? Do we have faith that we can perceive the literal, objective truth and then articulate that on the pages of a notebook? Are facts truth? Are feelings truth? Is imagination truth? Is there a difference between fictionalizing and semi-fictionalizing and exaggerating and lying; is the difference a matter of degree, a matter of interpretation?

Perhaps lies are secrets, too, and the ritual of confessing them in a diary can become part of the truth-telling.

And what’s the definition of a lie? Is a lie something we tell others that we know is not true? Can a lie also be what we secretly tell ourselves, something we only subconsciously know is not true? Are fantasies lies? Is the diary of an “insane” person a diary of truth or lies? Are dreams truth or lies? (Is a dream journal true only if it’s obvious that the words reflect the dreaming state? What if you write down your dreams but you don’t make it clear that it’s dreams that you’re recording; will that dream notebook, when read by an outsider, be perceived as truth or lies?) Is a diary of daydreams a diary of truth or lies? Is a diary of abstract thoughts a diary of truth or lies?

Perhaps only Nature doesn’t lie. Perhaps only Nature tells the truth. And what we perceive and write down and read, as socialized human beings raised in a particular culture, is always an interpretation—something that’s perceived as fact or fiction or lies or truth. But, ultimately, only the journal-keeper can know, in his or her own heart, whether or not the perceptions written down are personal truths that are consciously believed in or deliberate distortions of the personal landscape.

Novels in diary form… Here we have works that are presented as fiction, as lies, but written in the truth-telling genre of a diary. Readers of diary novels expect lies, in the same way that they expect them in other fiction they read. Yet there’s something about the diary form that easily gives the illusion of truth-telling, even when the diary isn’t factually true.

Fiction naturally contains truths of human nature; it’s just the details that aren’t literally true. And a work of fiction often reflects parts of the author’s own life. Autobiographical fiction is probably as common in conventional novels as it is in novels using the diary form. Truth is exaggerated, stretched…and within these exaggerations, or in spite of them, truth is told.

No work of fiction is entirely fictional, because the author can’t help but express his or her own thoughts, feelings, and imagination in the process of writing the story. The personal truths slip out, symbolically or directly, intentionally or unintentionally. Truth and lies are twins.

“Art is a lie that tells the truth.” —Picasso.

I think of the diaries of Anais Nin. She wrote the truth according to her feelings and the mix of selves that she was. Some people have claimed that she fictionalized parts of some of her journals, rewriting reality here and there, but I wonder if it ultimately matters whether or not all the facts in her journal are literally true. (What do we ultimately care more about—the facts and verifiable truth, or feelings and imagination?) Some claim she was trying to hide the truth when she invented or exaggerated certain aspects of her life. But I sense that she was after a larger, more meaningful truth, a truth that consisted of many colors and revelations. A truth beyond a box of “facts”.

Nin lived life as art. Art isn’t the factual truth, but it points in the direction of a larger truth. Perhaps her passion for life, discovery, and creative potential made her “fictionalize” or exaggerate some parts of her life. But symbolic truths can be just as important as factual truths.

She wrote novels and short stories as well as journals. But, to her, journals were her main passion, her main form of writing. Usually journals function as sidelines for writers, and may or may not later be considered creative works in themselves (I think of Virginia Woolf, here). But for Anais Nin, her life and her journal were one. However, being influenced by the literary world, she feared that her journal wouldn’t be considered “real” art. And so, sometimes, truth and fiction were blurred in her journals. The journal form was her art, just as her life was her art. And her fiction was autobiographical. Critics of her journal have said: It’s not real; she fictionalized it! Critics of her fiction have said: She’s just writing about her own life (as if to invalidate the work because it wasn’t "made up" and traditionally crafted).

Nin was like a conductor of an orchestra. Her journal, her short stories and novels, and her actual life made up that orchestra. The orchestra consisted of violins of truth, cellos of imagination, drums of exaggerations, flutes of lies, oboes of insights. But her real work was as a composer for a single instrument, and as a solo performer on that instrument…which was her diary. The “music” she composed for it came from her life, and she made it fit the diversity of the instrument.

Perhaps the only way to write about the unseen and the intangible is by going outside the duality of truth/lies.

A fantasy: I want to write A Diary of Lies. Actually, it’s already in my head, written in invisible ink. But I could just as easily call it A Diary of Imagination. It pretends to be real in order to express the full flavor of the imaginative thoughts. A Diary of Lies is a Diary of Imagination. It’s a true record of feelings and impressions. I follow the words on the page rather than recording the facts of “real life” in a sterile way. And where the lies/imaginations take me can’t be known until the words are written down. The lies feel real. A Diary of Lies is a true expression of the inner life. Sometimes one must “lie” on the outside to get to the truthful center.

My Diary of Lies explores inner feelings and impressions, but the diary also follows the facts of my life in an imaginary way. I note outer circumstances that might not be literally true but could be real if I was living in another time and place. My Diary of Lies rarely takes place in 2003, because contemporary times don’t fit my essence. And so I throw myself into the feeling of the past, when life was slower, when we didn’t have cell phones and televisions and computers. I write from the inside-out. In the Diary of Imagination, the inner impressions meet an outer world that isn’t hostile to the imagination. It’s like writing on air, like flying. I want to bypass technology and limitations.

But A Diary of Lies is an exaggeration, a joke, a paradox. Yet A Diary of Truth would be the same thing. Because we can’t get to the truth directly. Sometimes we get to it by revealing its opposite. And then, sometimes, what’s opposite becomes the truth. The “joke” is that we can never really know if someone is lying or telling the truth in a diary.

A Diary of Lies can be many things, and it’s fluid, it creates itself in the moment, because a lie is powerful and can lead to unknown places. A lie is dangerous. A lie walks a tightrope. A lie makes you look over your shoulder, and ask: What’s following me? What?—Myself? You? My ancestors? The dolls I played with as a child? My enemies? My father? My longings? My unfulfilled dreams? My deepest fears?

Suppose someone wanted to write something totally fictional, with not an ounce of truth in it. Is that even possible? Doesn’t truth creep into our most bald-faced lies? Isn’t every fiction “contaminated” with truth? If not, how would fiction have any meaning to us at all?

When I was in the 8th grade, in 1959, for one of my classes I had to write a report about cave dwellers (Neanderthals). We were told to research the way these people might have lived and then write a report about that. I decided to write the report in diary form. I pretended I was a female cave dweller, writing my diary on the walls of a cave (my inks were the dyes that came from berries and petals of flowers, and my pen was my forefinger). I wrote about what I did during the day, and what I was afraid of (I was most afraid of dinosaurs and volcanoes). I feared I’d get an “F” on this project, but I was awarded an “A”. The teacher read the diary in front of the class and said it was original and entertaining. I remember how hard and unnatural it felt, trying to write a formal report, a conventional essay. And how easy and natural it felt to write about myself as a cave dweller who revealed day-to-day life in diary form. It was easy to write from the perspective of one imaginary girl rather than a 20th century young American looking back in time in an attempt to be objective. We learn by personalizing (and by imagining and exaggerating) the facts.

Writing a Diary of Lies is like watching a film. You know, on some level, that the film isn’t real. People are acting. And you’re sitting in a movie theater watching images on a screen; you’re not out on the street interacting with real people. But if the film is powerful, and you find some of your deeper self in it, your imagination allows you to enter the film as if it’s real, as if you’re the main character going through specific experiences.

“Art is a lie that tells the truth.” If I write a diary of lies, I want the lies to tell the truth. I want to let the lies burn away the censors, the censors that keep me from what I dare myself to face. I don’t want to convince myself of anything, I don’t want to have an opinion, I want to let myself fall through the layers. And I want the words I use to take me there, to take me to an unknown place that will feel like “yes”. To a strange new place that feels like home. Lies that tell the truth feel like home, feel like “yes”.

I’m not interested in writing a conventional novel, not even an autobiographical novel. But if I wrote a “fictional” journal, it would be true. If I wrote a Diary of Lies, it would be true. I don’t want to make anything up. What appears to be made up is not really made up; it’s the truth of the imagination. Imagination isn’t a fiction if it’s expressed in a personal, day-to-day way, straight from your life. It’s fiction only when you make something up in a calculated way, draw on outside material, and have a formula, a plan, an outline, separate from your life. Anything I’d fictionalize in a diary would be spontaneous and all-me.

I see myself as a seeker of truth, and I see my notebooks as the ultimate place where truth can be investigated and told. So it would seem that a diary of lies would be the opposite of everything I feel my journal to be…but the paradox is that it’s not the opposite.

I live many lives as I’m living my life. There’s the outer life I live, and there are the many inner lives I live. A diary of lies would be a diary that tries to capture those inner lives. And those lives are very mixed in with the “real” outer life I live. So which-is-which? If I let myself go, if I don’t restrain or censor myself, I can’t tell which-is-which.

The beauty of the journal: facts are recorded, but then, if you want, you can fly beyond the gravity of the facts. Perhaps lies are truths that don’t obey gravity. Perhaps lies are truths with wings.

I like questions more than answers. I write a lot of questions in my journal. What’s closer to the truth—questions or answers? Perhaps questions are beyond the duality of truth/lies.

Our lies and exaggerations reveal as much about us as the truth. To exaggerate, to lie, is playful, colorful.

Years ago I read a novel in diary form, The Diary of A Rapist by the American writer Evan S. Connell (this was his 3rd novel, published in 1966). It was a dark and disturbing tale, controversial, and definitely not for everyone. But what struck me most about this novel was its (diary) form.

The novel covered one year in the life of the fictional diarist (there’s a diary entry for nearly every day of the year). Each entry in the diary is dated (month/day), and many of the entries are short, precise, broken, like shattered glass; brief, chilling, “factual” entries. The diary-novel builds and builds, entry-by-entry…and then ends with dates (December 26-31) that contain only empty space and silence. Just: “December 29” (blank space…), “December 30” (blank space…), “December 31” (blank space…)

This book couldn’t have been written in any other form but the diary form in order to be as existentially powerful and suspenseful as it was. I felt I was reading a real diary as I was reading this piece of fiction. The book illustrates how well the diary form can animate certain states of mind over a period of time. In this case, madness.

Every diary consists of selective truths. To write about your life in a journal notebook is to edit your life. Is it untrue to deliberately avoid writing about a specific feeling or subject? Are the things that aren’t said, the subjects that are avoided, as important as what is written down?

Readers of diaries tend to expect the truth from diarists, as if truth can be known, literally, and verified objectively. And if these readers sense that the diary contains untruths, or distortions of the truth, the diary itself—as well as the diarist—isn’t trusted, as if it’s morally wrong to deliberately write something in a diary that’s not true. But ultimately there’s no way to fully verify what’s true and what’s not true.

Sometimes, when I read conventional novels, I rewrite them in my head as I’m reading them. I rewrite them in diary form. I rewrite them so the words feel more alive, direct, personal, spontaneous. I rewrite them so I can live in them instead of remaining just a reader who’s on the outside. When I read, I don’t want to be a reader; I want, instead, to be the person writing what I read. I like to read diaries and journals because then I can feel that I’m living someone else’s life. I feel limited being inside myself, only; I want to jump outside myself, into the world of another.

I rewrite conventional novels in my head so I can feel the lies as truth.

My diary of lies is a door leading into many different rooms, a place to express thoughts and feelings and moods from different points of view. I can’t escape myself in this diary, and I find myself on wide territory, sometimes foreign territory. By keeping a diary of lies, I come closer to the essential nature of truth…and I spontaneously create an in-depth portrait of myself and how I perceive. A diary of lies becomes a novel about myself, a novel where the many different selves I am are different characters…only all the characters in my diary are named “I”.

And therein lies the intrigue, the seduction. To write a diary of lies is a way to experience my life fully, and a way to ultimately transcend the “I”. The lies give me the freedom to jump into and out of many levels. To stick only with The Truth is one-dimensional, forced, rigid. Lies give me freedom. By writing a diary of lies I can say anything, and I set myself free.

To believe that a journal must contain only factual truth is to invalidate the range of what can be explored within a journal. The whole charm and beauty of journal writing is that it has no rules, it can be whatever you want it to be.

When writing in a journal notebook, no matter what its keeper’s intent, I don’t think one can escape from telling truths or lies. And the more dynamic a journal is, the more it will dive into both extremes—both truth and lies, all mixed up. And everything in between truth and lies…such as exaggerations, half-truths, half-lies, wishful thinking, etc. The telling of truth and lies is either deliberate or unconscious or semi-conscious. In any case, what’s expressed in the telling reflects the character of the writer—the individual’s moods, longings, imagination, etc.—as long as the words come out spontaneously, unforced, and with a sense of saying something that needed to be said.

In writing these thoughts about truth and lies and journal writing, I’m reminded of our essential nature—our longing to express, our desire to be free, our need to have secrets and also the desire to reveal them, and the sense that our lives are mysterious. The mystery can be expressed in a fictional diary written by a known writer or in the diary of a “nobody”. Everything is connected to everything else—day-to-day life is connected to art is connected to truth and lies is connected to fiction is connected to humanity…

The most important thing that’s in my journal is what I don’t write down. I don’t write it down because there aren’t any words for it. It’s a “something” found in between all the words I write, and it’s held together by the fragmented magic of the journal/diary/notebook’s essence. It is something I sense, something beyond truth and lies, and, ultimately, it’s something beyond my own individual life.

Copyright © 2003 by Olivia Dresher

This essay was published in Issue #3 (2003) of The Diarist’s Journal.