Yes. Well, kind of. It is almost
impossible to remove yourself from your own work; feelings and influences will
creep their way among the chosen letters of each piece, no matter how hard one
tries to eliminate such occurrences. What a person writes tells us a lot about
that person, there is some truth there even if it is unintentional. When I say
‘truth’ I mean in terms of the emotion and character of a person, not the factual
accuracy of their words. Some have said that John Creever used his work to
display his own sexual ambiguity and if so a possibly unspoken truth was found
in his writing; if not, and that statement was false, then I can truthfully
apologise for my imagination.
Factual accuracy, even in
non-fiction, is never entirely without manipulation. A bias nature is bound to
come through and it is up to each of us on how subtle we are when putting our
pens to paper.
I believe that every writer
starts with their own truths and then decides how much they are willing to unveil
to the world. Truth will always be in
writing to some extent, however, even with the noblest of intentions there is unlikely
to be a completely honest piece of writing, unless the writer is extremely
brave or extremely stupid. Although I seem to have contradicted myself
throughout, my overall answer to this question is still:
YES, there is a place for the truth in writing.
The idea that an author can reveal a truth through their writing without even realising is always interesting to consider. And tends to make me paranoid. Your suggestion regarding completely honest writing was also amusing.
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