The Debt

 "She couldn't show that pain to anyone else until she'd perfected the way she wanted to tell it, until she had complete control over the narrative. Until she'd polished it into a version and argument that she was comfortable with."

--Yellowface, Rebecca F. Kuang

Have you ever known someone like that? Someone who takes actual history and fashions it into a story that seems more suitable or more personally bearable?

I have. I do.

It is said by psychologists that sometimes when people feel beholden to others for one reason or another, it becomes a terrible burden to them and they must somehow alter the details in such a way that the roles are switched, the story is rewritten from start to finish, and it is now they to whom something is owed.

An example of such behavior may be found in the relationship between Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald in the young years approached Hemingway with genuine generosity. He was the known writer at the time, quite famous already for his early work. He took Hemingway under his wing, so to speak, and forwarded that young writer's work to his own editor at Scribner's. So compelling was Fitzgerald's praise of this new author's work that Scribner's agreed to pick up Hemingway's short stories and novels. In short, Hemingway owed his early success in publishing to Fitzgerald's self defacing interest and support.

Later on in his career, when Hemingway had become the famous author and Fitzgerald was fading, Hemingway sought to change the story and to portray himself as the generous benefactor and long suffering friend. Rather cruelly, he assassinated Fitzgerald, figuratively of course, in a number of works such as The Snows of Kilimanjaro and A Movable Feast. Hemingway, for whatever reason, could not bear to owe anything to his competitor and fellow author. The true story did not fit with the general fiction Hemingway had made of his life--the self-possessed man of confidence and competence, leaning on no one.

Some people change the stories because they have to, because our histories are not always pleasant, not always honorable, not always how we want to think of ourselves in the present. But for me, this would be unbearable. The truth is the truth, and when it seems undesirable or shameful or weak or unbefitting, it is still the truth and is best embraced and acknowledge and regretted and repented. And from there comes regeneration. That is the best way.