Gossip, scandal and telling the truth

What do writers owe, and what are readers entitled to?

Photo by Satyabratasm on Unsplash

‘And they found her in bed with the dog, and the owner…’

Hello Team CCC! Howaya? I’m writing this on a Sunday evening, after a lovely weekend of pottering about - I saw the TKE group show, Lola Stong-Bett at the Carl Freedman and Kavel Rafferty’s new show. I went to new local seaside diner Hoff’s for coffee and eggs, I had a lovely swim in the tidal pool with my friend

FFS

(and if she hadn’t been with me, I would have stayed out of the water because there were quite a lot of jellyfish…but she was very brave, so I had to be) and I finished my reread of You Are Here, ahead of interviewing David Nicholls.

I also recorded a special mini episode of the You’re Booked podcast. It’s a companion listen to my Guardian piece. I’ve curated a themed reading list for you, and shared some tips about specific ways to get the most of of your summer reading. Find it here (or wherever you get your podcasts!) and if you’re not familiar, please enjoy our supremely bingeable archives, featuring all of your favourite authors (David Nicholls, for example, is here!)

More tour stuff: I hope to see you at the Idler festival next Sunday 13 July in Hampstead, North London - tickets here - and the Edinburgh Book Festival on Monday 11 August, where I’ll be in conversation with Hattie Crisell Tickets here. I’ll be at the Love Stories Etc festival at Manchester Central Library with Jendella Benson and Claire Daverley. Tickets here.

Now for some hot takes on hot gossip…

I’ve been gossiping, and I don’t feel good about it.

This weekend an investigation was published in a national newspaper, ‘exposing’ a public figure from the publishing world, and purporting to reveal the ‘truth’ about their work. Before I started gorging myself on that gossip, I was reading a story I’ve been following about a publishing company that has gone bust, owing its writers huge sums of money. It’s very easy for me to judge and tut and point fingers. It’s very easy for me to assume ‘the truth’, as it’s now being presented, is a complete correction – rather than a second data set which might need further verification. Most of all it’s very easy for me to tilt my head and clutch my pearls and say ‘How dreadful!’ and ‘I would never…’

I can pretend that I’m interested because I’m deeply invested in the events affecting my industry. This is a lie. And I think in some ways, it’s a worse one than the ‘lies’ which are being ‘exposed’. Gossip is not feeding my soul. It’s not making me enlightened or compassionate. I don’t think I can even pretend that I want gossip for the sake of the stories. Rather, it’s a temporarily satisfying reward for being ‘good’ – and for staying safe in the crowd while punishing those who dared to put their heads above the parapet.

But the craving for gossip is human. We want to gather information. We want to strengthen the tribe, and our position within it. We want to know what happens when people transgress. (A 2019 study found that, of the sample analysed, just 15% of gossip was negative – most of it was neutral. ) Novels are mostly gossip and conjecture. I love Middlemarch because it’s gossipy. And I was happily judging everyone I met. As soon as Raffles turned up, I started booing, long before I stopped to wonder about the unhappy events in a person’s past that might lead them to commit (forgive me, a spoiler) blackmail. I’ve written before about how much I love oral histories. Meet Me In The Bathroom, I Want My MTV and Tales From The Colony Room have all been, rightly, commended and garlanded with awards. They were all written by talented authors, who researched their subjects with rigour. However, I read them with an open mouth and pounding heart, as though I was reading something in the National Enquirer about a fading film star who believed that they had been abducted by aliens.

Happily, I don’t feel befouled by fictional / vintage gossip. But I’ve been thinking about us all, as writers and readers. What we owe, and what we believe we are owed. The delicious thing about writing stories is that we’re meant to use them as vehicles for pure invention. And yet, many of us use them as spaces to hide the truth in plain sight. I’ve written books with an element of memoir, and many first-person pieces for newspapers and magazines. There are inconsistencies, depending on the editor, their angle and the word count…

I’ve always done my very best to write the emotional truth, but timelines get compressed. I construct aliases and superficial disguises to protect the innocent. One of my sisters hates being referred to in print, so I’ve given her a pseudonym. If I’m writing about anyone I know, I give them copy approval and let them change any detail they like. If they’ve always wanted to be blonde, they can go blonde on the page. The truth will set you free, but first you must dress it in a hat and sunglasses and move it to a safe house on a different side of the river.