Sorry, Mr Anonymous

"I'm sure you'll appreciate their approach and understand why they've dramatized certain scenes. "

That's what an anonymous commenter had to say last week about my concerns with a biography of Houdini. Well, I've read all 560 pages of the book, and I have to say Mr Anonymous was wrong. I'm not going to tell you The Secret Life of Houdini is bad -- it isn't. I enjoyed it and I learned from it. But I don't "appreciate their approach," nor "understand why they've dramatized certain scenes."


To remind you, this is the authors' disclaimer that set me off last week:
"To make certain stories come alive for the reader, we've dramatized scenes using composite material, but although we occasionally shift what people said in time, we've always remained faithful to what the players said and thought. When we give you Houdini's thoughts, they are based on interviews or letters in which he's revealed them. We made nothing up; in some cases, we've just turned facts into dialogue."

And I'll say again that I really do appreciate that they're willing to spell this out in the introduction. Full disclosure and all that. And I certainly don't think they went off on any wild flights of fancy when they did dramatize some scenes. But I stand by my belief that non-fiction should be just that -- NON-fiction, reported as true-to-life as the research allows.

In any standard biography, you should be able to take any line in quotation marks and confidently tell someone else, 'Houdini said/wrote/thought ____.' I'm not sure this is always the case in The Secret Life of Houdini. If Houdini's thoughts are "based on interviews or letters" [my emphasis] that doesn't sound like they're necessarily reproduced verbatim. "[F]aithful to what the players said and thought" suggests to me that the wording may have been altered or clarified for the authors' or readers' convenience or entertainment. Then there's the issues of "shift[ing] what people said in time" and "using composite material." All of that combines to leave at least this reader somewhat unsure of who said exactly what and when or how they said it.

I may have come away with an accurate overall impression of Houdini -- and in spite of my gripes I believe I did -- but the precision of the details is hazy. It may well be that there's a very small percentage of actual dramatization in The Secret Life of Houdini. The problem is that as a reader, it's impossible to know, and as much as I enjoyed the book, I resent having to guess what's dead-on accurate and what's been dressed up for my presumed entertainment. Ahem: I don't read biographies for entertainment -- I read them to learn. When I want to be entertained, I reach for historical fiction.

Now that I've done all my fussing and chastizing, I have to admit this: Mr. Houdini himself probably wouldn't have minded the authors' approach in the slightest. From reading this book, it's absolutely clear that Houdini had no qualms about telling tall tales about himself, or riling his audience up for the sake of drama. From page 45:

"That was the first time I realized the public wanted drama. Give 'em a hint of danger, perhaps of death -- and you'll have 'em packing in to see you!"

Touche, Harry.

I just hope that's a direct quote. *wink*


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A note to my previous (and only) anonymous commenter: If you have something to say, please sign your name to it. I'm putting my name behind my opinions -- I hope you'll have the courtesy to do the same this time.
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Currently reading:

Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination
by Neal Gabler