Fact or Fiction!
Sitting on my desk in dim orange light this late May afternoon are Aron Cohen’s naturalization papers that he obtained in 1884, with dates, signatures, addresses and other information, as well as a passport application he made in 1913 indicating the name of the ship, Thuringia, on which he emigrated from Hamburg to New York in 1871. There is also a pile of census records for the Cohen family, as well as many newspaper articles about Aron and advertisements he placed for his tobacco business in the 1880’s. In a separate pile, I’ve got a folder containing death notices for Aron, his wife Hannah, and his mother Flora, containing additional biographical information, as well another folder with genealogical records, passenger manifests, photographs, personal memorabilia, business ledgers, and correspondence.
How much of a life can be recreated from this pile of words and images? In creating a narrative, is it important how much is historically accurate and how much is made up? Could one rearrange facts and chronology, just a bit, for clarity? When I write, my attention is focused on connecting every line to the next, not letting missing bits and pieces of history or small irrelevancies impede or clutter narrative flow. Does it matter that Aron Cohen’s addresses in various documents are inconsistent, or that my great, great grandfather Simon Cohen was married twice? I’m going to judiciously alter things just a bit, without sacrificing the historical record. I won’t defer to every single “fact,” or to missing fragments, which would put potholes in the road.
And anyway, are historical “facts” really immutable? Aron Cohen, on his passport application says he lives in San Francisco, but his death certificate says he lived only in Santa Cruz! I’m not suggesting what I may write is more fiction than reality. It isn’t. But I plan on going beyond Aron Cohen and Max Strauss and their families. I’m more interested in their choices and reactions to events, or more generally, about human behavior. I want to go beyond the particular and raise questions about who they were, and who we are as human beings, and how we react to the reoccurring and transcendent themes of our lives: loss, fear, doubt, anger, accomplishment, and sometimes acceptance.