What do you think?
Rate this book
Most of What Follows Is True: Places Imagined and Real
The prizewinning author of The Innocents examines the relationships among fact, fiction, fictionalization, and appropriation in this thought-provoking work."In all creative writing, the question of what is true and what is real are two very different considerations. Figuring out how to dance between them is a murky business."In Most of What Follows Is True , Michael Crummey examines the complex relationship between fact and fiction, between the "real world" and the stories we tell to explain it. Drawing on his own experience appropriating historical characters to fictional ends, he brings forward important questions about how writers use history and real-life figures to animate fictional stories. Is there a limit to the liberties a writer can take? Is there a point at which a fictionalized history becomes a false history? What responsibilities do writers have to their readers, and to the historical and cultural materials they exploit as sources? Crummey offers thoughtful, witty views on the deep and timely conversation around appropriation.
- GenresNonfictionEssaysWriting
51 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 2, 2019
2 people are currently reading
98 people want to read
About the author
Michael Crummey
26 books992 followersBorn in Buchans, Newfoundland, Crummey grew up there and in Wabush, Labrador, where he moved with his family in the late 1970s. He went to university with no idea what to do with his life and, to make matters worse, started writing poems in his first year. Just before graduating with a BA in English he won the Gregory Power Poetry Award. First prize was three hundred dollars (big bucks back in 1987) and it gave him the mistaken impression there was money to be made in poetry.
He published a slender collection of poems called Arguments with Gravity in 1996, followed two years later by Hard Light. 1998 also saw the publication of a collection of short stories, Flesh and Blood, and Crummey's nomination for the Journey Prize.
Crummey's debut novel, River Thieves (2001) was a Canadian bestseller, winning the Thomas Head Raddall Award and the Winterset Award for Excellence in Newfoundland Writing. It was also shortlisted for the Giller Prize, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the Books in Canada First Novel Award, and the IMPAC Award. His second novel, The Wreckage (2005), was nominated for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and longlisted for the 2007 IMPAC Award.
Galore was published in Canada in 2009. A national bestseller, it was the winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book (Canada & Caribbean), the Canadian Authors' Association Fiction Prize and was shortlisted for the Governor-General's Award for fiction.
He lives in St. John's, Newfoundland with his wife and three step-kids.
He published a slender collection of poems called Arguments with Gravity in 1996, followed two years later by Hard Light. 1998 also saw the publication of a collection of short stories, Flesh and Blood, and Crummey's nomination for the Journey Prize.
Crummey's debut novel, River Thieves (2001) was a Canadian bestseller, winning the Thomas Head Raddall Award and the Winterset Award for Excellence in Newfoundland Writing. It was also shortlisted for the Giller Prize, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the Books in Canada First Novel Award, and the IMPAC Award. His second novel, The Wreckage (2005), was nominated for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and longlisted for the 2007 IMPAC Award.
Galore was published in Canada in 2009. A national bestseller, it was the winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book (Canada & Caribbean), the Canadian Authors' Association Fiction Prize and was shortlisted for the Governor-General's Award for fiction.
He lives in St. John's, Newfoundland with his wife and three step-kids.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
November 30, 2021
Most of What Follows Is True is the transcript of a lecture presented by Canadian author Michael Crummey that interrogates the relationship between creative fiction and cultural appropriation. Using the case of his home province of Newfoundland, Crummey asks timely and important questions about whether there are limits to the liberties that a writer can take when telling stories about real people and places. This is a short, entertaining, well-written essay.
...it's disconcerting to think I might be a person's only window on a place and a culture so complex and contested, given the fact that the "mirror" I am holding up is webbed with cracks, some intentional, others decidedly not.
...it's disconcerting to think I might be a person's only window on a place and a culture so complex and contested, given the fact that the "mirror" I am holding up is webbed with cracks, some intentional, others decidedly not.
August 21, 2019
“Most of What Follows is True” is a transcript of a lecture presented by Canadian author Michael Crummey. He discusses the relationship between fact and fiction, and the responsibilities writers have to their readers and their sources.
This isn’t the type of thing I would usually pick up to read, but the topic interests me because I read a lot of historical fiction that is based on real people or places, and I thought it would be interesting to get an author’s viewpoint. As he says in his lecture: “In all creative writing, the question of what is true and what is real are two very different considerations. Figuring out how to dance between them is a murky business.”
It was interesting to read his take on the novel “The Bird Artist”, which drove him mad because of its blatant inaccuracies in its presentation of Newfoundland and Newfoundlanders’ lives during the early 20th century. Absolutely nothing about the book rings true or is factual. He uses the book to make his point: it’s perfectly fine to play around with the facts when you’re writing fiction, but a writer owes at least something to his sources and shouldn’t disregard every single social, cultural and historical element of a particular place.
Coincidentally, I had just finished reading an historical novel the day before reading this lecture, and I found that I agreed with Crummey but with one added point: I have a real problem when authors present a character, based on a real person, with a flaw that is morally wrong and they are no longer alive to defend themselves. One of the male characters in this particular novel (based on a real person) viciously rapes a woman (a totally fictional character). No one had ever come forth in real life with allegations of sexual assault against this man during his lifetime (although many years after his death some of his children claimed he’d abused them); I think it is grossly unfair to attack a person’s character is such a derogatory manner when they aren’t here to defend themselves. Using the excuse that everyone knows it’s fiction just doesn’t cut it. Readers can’t help but imagine the person in a different light after reading something like that.
Anyway, this little 64-page booklet would be an interesting read for anyone who enjoys historical novels and has ever wondered where to draw the line between fact and fiction.
This isn’t the type of thing I would usually pick up to read, but the topic interests me because I read a lot of historical fiction that is based on real people or places, and I thought it would be interesting to get an author’s viewpoint. As he says in his lecture: “In all creative writing, the question of what is true and what is real are two very different considerations. Figuring out how to dance between them is a murky business.”
It was interesting to read his take on the novel “The Bird Artist”, which drove him mad because of its blatant inaccuracies in its presentation of Newfoundland and Newfoundlanders’ lives during the early 20th century. Absolutely nothing about the book rings true or is factual. He uses the book to make his point: it’s perfectly fine to play around with the facts when you’re writing fiction, but a writer owes at least something to his sources and shouldn’t disregard every single social, cultural and historical element of a particular place.
Coincidentally, I had just finished reading an historical novel the day before reading this lecture, and I found that I agreed with Crummey but with one added point: I have a real problem when authors present a character, based on a real person, with a flaw that is morally wrong and they are no longer alive to defend themselves. One of the male characters in this particular novel (based on a real person) viciously rapes a woman (a totally fictional character). No one had ever come forth in real life with allegations of sexual assault against this man during his lifetime (although many years after his death some of his children claimed he’d abused them); I think it is grossly unfair to attack a person’s character is such a derogatory manner when they aren’t here to defend themselves. Using the excuse that everyone knows it’s fiction just doesn’t cut it. Readers can’t help but imagine the person in a different light after reading something like that.
Anyway, this little 64-page booklet would be an interesting read for anyone who enjoys historical novels and has ever wondered where to draw the line between fact and fiction.
May 15, 2024
What is the relationship between what is valid and what is true?
Anyone who — like myself — presumes to write fiction set in some version of a real place involving real people would do well to read this essay by Michael Crummey. A writer of historical novels — and even novels set in places representative of our present day — is inevitably faced with questions about the relationship between fact and fiction; and more particularly the actions and motivations of real individuals.
As Crummey points out, fiction, by telling a story, can serve to “thicken the real” of an actual place or event. But doing so is fraught with the inevitable human tendency toward fact-checking, along with a host of unknowable prejudices and animosities that have arisen out of the historical events and actions of the historical figures being included in a fictional work. Crummey mentions several examples where it becomes clear that the degree to which writers have handled these issues well or badly varies a great deal.
In the end, he posits that while a writer’s first obligation is to tell a compelling story, if he fails to sufficiently respect his subject matter and truly endeavor to get it as close to reality as possible, then he must be prepared to endure some justifiably harsh criticism.
Anyone who — like myself — presumes to write fiction set in some version of a real place involving real people would do well to read this essay by Michael Crummey. A writer of historical novels — and even novels set in places representative of our present day — is inevitably faced with questions about the relationship between fact and fiction; and more particularly the actions and motivations of real individuals.
As Crummey points out, fiction, by telling a story, can serve to “thicken the real” of an actual place or event. But doing so is fraught with the inevitable human tendency toward fact-checking, along with a host of unknowable prejudices and animosities that have arisen out of the historical events and actions of the historical figures being included in a fictional work. Crummey mentions several examples where it becomes clear that the degree to which writers have handled these issues well or badly varies a great deal.
In the end, he posits that while a writer’s first obligation is to tell a compelling story, if he fails to sufficiently respect his subject matter and truly endeavor to get it as close to reality as possible, then he must be prepared to endure some justifiably harsh criticism.
Read
November 1, 2022A tidy print version of the Kreisel lecture given a few years back. Of particular interest to those who like Newfoundland fiction and fiction about Newfoundland (not at all necessarily the same thing).
December 19, 2019
Review on prairiefire.ca Review by Karine Legault-Leblond
Most of what follows is true reads as the beginning of a blueprint for writing about real places, historical figures and facts, in both fiction and nonfiction. While Michael Crummey gave this lecture in an academic context, during the Kreisel Lecture Series (University of Alberta, 2018), he definitely speaks from a practitioner’s stance. In this booklet of barely 40 pages, he launches writers on a path of self-reflection about their own use of real elements, while raising readers’ awareness about the cultural and social effects of such literary representations.
The novelist and poet from Newfoundland proceeds to a critical reading of a small body of works, by other Maritime writers or by foreigners who have chosen a Newfoundland location as their setting: Wayne Johnston (The Colony of Unrequited Dreams), Howard Norman (The Bird Artist), Annie Proulx (The Shipping News), among others. Underlying his whole demonstration is this idea that “[i]n some barely definable way, the real world does not fully exist until it has been fictionalized or ‘told’, until the mirror is held up and we see our own faces” (5). He offers a profusion of concrete examples to illustrate the possible pitfalls of writing about real-life characters and places, of holding this figurative “mirror” to people’s faces.
Perhaps because he is himself a writer, the author does not fall into the trap of enunciating rules or prescriptions, but points out factual errors, omissions or liberties taken by writers. He then raises very topical questions: “What do I owe to the history and the historical figures I was writing about? What are the limits to the liberties that can be taken?” (36-37). He also wonders if there comes a point where writing imaginatively about real people and places trespasses onto cultural appropriation? Voluntary or not, he argues, these creative choices alter the work’s reception and can bring forth a lot of criticism from the people who feel they have been misrepresented. At the same time, when a place like Newfoundland is repeatedly used by great writers as the backdrop for their story, it can “make a significant mark nationally and internationally” (7).
While we can certainly grasp his general ideas and point of view without having read any of the titles he mentions, some subtleties of his explanations might elude us if we do not make the effort of cracking open some of those books. It is precisely the kind of lecture from which you learn in proportion to the intellectual effort you are willing to input and a very compelling example of the necessity for a writer to read consciously and reflect on her own practice in order to write better.
Most of what follows is true reads as the beginning of a blueprint for writing about real places, historical figures and facts, in both fiction and nonfiction. While Michael Crummey gave this lecture in an academic context, during the Kreisel Lecture Series (University of Alberta, 2018), he definitely speaks from a practitioner’s stance. In this booklet of barely 40 pages, he launches writers on a path of self-reflection about their own use of real elements, while raising readers’ awareness about the cultural and social effects of such literary representations.
The novelist and poet from Newfoundland proceeds to a critical reading of a small body of works, by other Maritime writers or by foreigners who have chosen a Newfoundland location as their setting: Wayne Johnston (The Colony of Unrequited Dreams), Howard Norman (The Bird Artist), Annie Proulx (The Shipping News), among others. Underlying his whole demonstration is this idea that “[i]n some barely definable way, the real world does not fully exist until it has been fictionalized or ‘told’, until the mirror is held up and we see our own faces” (5). He offers a profusion of concrete examples to illustrate the possible pitfalls of writing about real-life characters and places, of holding this figurative “mirror” to people’s faces.
Perhaps because he is himself a writer, the author does not fall into the trap of enunciating rules or prescriptions, but points out factual errors, omissions or liberties taken by writers. He then raises very topical questions: “What do I owe to the history and the historical figures I was writing about? What are the limits to the liberties that can be taken?” (36-37). He also wonders if there comes a point where writing imaginatively about real people and places trespasses onto cultural appropriation? Voluntary or not, he argues, these creative choices alter the work’s reception and can bring forth a lot of criticism from the people who feel they have been misrepresented. At the same time, when a place like Newfoundland is repeatedly used by great writers as the backdrop for their story, it can “make a significant mark nationally and internationally” (7).
While we can certainly grasp his general ideas and point of view without having read any of the titles he mentions, some subtleties of his explanations might elude us if we do not make the effort of cracking open some of those books. It is precisely the kind of lecture from which you learn in proportion to the intellectual effort you are willing to input and a very compelling example of the necessity for a writer to read consciously and reflect on her own practice in order to write better.
June 30, 2022
Short and to the point. This is a work about writers craft. Even in fiction, the details and developments must be true to the chosen place and time line and setting or the story however compelling remains deeply flawed and inauthentic. This is the subject of Michael Crummey's compelling essay and it reads as completely true. Using examples from his own and others flawed work he makes his point with gentleness and humour. You should not have bees buzzing where no bees have ever lived. Sometimes mistakes or oversights happen in an authors work and that is to be expected, but to grossly misrepresent a time and place or a person when that place was specifically chosen for your story is just wrong headed.
The harshness and pleasures of the people of Newfoundland ring strongly in this work. When life has treated people so harshly to begin with it seems doubly wrong to misrepresent them in a work of fiction. To true.
The harshness and pleasures of the people of Newfoundland ring strongly in this work. When life has treated people so harshly to begin with it seems doubly wrong to misrepresent them in a work of fiction. To true.
March 18, 2025
The text of the author’s Kreisel Lecture ( April 12, 2018, at University of Alberta’s Canadian Literature Center) answers questions about how much truth is in historical fiction.
“I guess the romantic me still wants to say a good story is any story that feels “true” to the reader.” But he adds to that romantic notion “on some level, all creative writing is an act of appropriation…and in that process, despite our best intentions (or because of them), there are inevitable distortions, adjustments, blind spots and mistakes that snake their way in.” Page 43 Crummey
This made me think! I love historical fiction that brings real people, places, and situations to life, but am now more aware that every wonderful novel based on history is still fiction with facts pleasingly mixed in by authors of varying talent and levels of research. Thanks to my library for ILL to me all the way from Fordham University.
“I guess the romantic me still wants to say a good story is any story that feels “true” to the reader.” But he adds to that romantic notion “on some level, all creative writing is an act of appropriation…and in that process, despite our best intentions (or because of them), there are inevitable distortions, adjustments, blind spots and mistakes that snake their way in.” Page 43 Crummey
This made me think! I love historical fiction that brings real people, places, and situations to life, but am now more aware that every wonderful novel based on history is still fiction with facts pleasingly mixed in by authors of varying talent and levels of research. Thanks to my library for ILL to me all the way from Fordham University.
May 22, 2020
This is a fascinating, quick read... basically it is the lecture Crummey delivered during the KreiselLecture Series in 2018. In this lecture, Crummey outlines and shares his thought on fact and fiction in writing. It's an insight into his process for writing and certainly explains his efforts to bring fiction to life through the research, dialect and historical perspectives often seen within his books.
Crummey talks about his favourite film - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid...and how the Hollywood version was so different from the true history.
He also cites other authors who write books - set in Newfoundland, but have no context of Newfoundland within the covers.
I found the reading to be insightful and interesting...
Crummey talks about his favourite film - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid...and how the Hollywood version was so different from the true history.
He also cites other authors who write books - set in Newfoundland, but have no context of Newfoundland within the covers.
I found the reading to be insightful and interesting...
February 8, 2024
Wonderful. I totally want to invite Crummey for dinner - what an entertaining guest. His lecture on using real history to inform a fictional story can be summed up in this great quote:
P.39 "...in the process of fictionalizing the lives of actual people. Although the historical record is fairly clear about what these peolpe did, there is a lot more grey area when it comes to the question of why they did that they did. And this is historical fiction's sweet spot. This is the place where novels do what straight history cannot - creating interior lives, motivations, foibles, desires and fears for the dead. Making visible the dark matter at the heart of human history that we can sense but otherwise cannot see or touch."
P.39 "...in the process of fictionalizing the lives of actual people. Although the historical record is fairly clear about what these peolpe did, there is a lot more grey area when it comes to the question of why they did that they did. And this is historical fiction's sweet spot. This is the place where novels do what straight history cannot - creating interior lives, motivations, foibles, desires and fears for the dead. Making visible the dark matter at the heart of human history that we can sense but otherwise cannot see or touch."
November 9, 2020
A thought-provoking essay on how far we can stretch the truth in historical fiction and the potential offence therein. Crummey builds to a great ending point with the assertion that all creative writing is appropriative, although I felt he could’ve been clearer in distinguishing his exact feelings on the subject
October 31, 2024
This intelligent and insightful essay is a must-read for any writers and readers of historical fiction.
October 17, 2019
This is a transcript of a lecture that Michael Crummey, a Canadian writer, gave on the subject of writing the relationship between fact and fiction, and writing about Newfoundland. It was actually quite fascinating reading as he weaves together the myth of Butch Cassidy, the last surviving member of the indigenous Beotuk tribe, and the impact that Annie Proulx's book "Shipping News" had on the writer's community in Newfoundland. It is a short book, but I read it in one sitting and now I want to read the rest of this author's books.
November 17, 2019
Makes me want to write. I would also like to read this again. It's a thin book, but there is a lot to learn from it. I was entertained on many levels. Yes, I'll read it again.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews