Reading Comprehension

PT154 · S3 · P2 · Q11 Literary Falsehoods

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Passage A The path a historical novelist has to tread is clearly beset by dangers.

Topic

The necessity and complexity of "lying" (inventing or altering facts) in historical novels and autobiographical writing.

Framework

Present Debate (both passages wrestle with the tension between truth and invention in writing about the past).

Main Point

Both passages argue that factual inaccuracies—what they call "lies"—are sometimes necessary and even desirable for writers of historical novels (Passage A) or autobiographies (Passage B), as these "lies" can enhance narrative, character, and emotional truth. However, both also express that there's a line between productive invention and unintentional errors or misleading distortions. - Most Valuable Sentences: - Passage A: (End of P1) - Passage B: (P3)

P1A: The Dilemma for Historical Novelists

Writers of historical novels face a challenge: being completely accurate means unreadable or dull books, so they must invent dialogue and details to bring characters to life, which means "telling lies" to some extent.

P2A: Distinguishing Lies from Mistakes

It's important to differentiate between intentional "lies" (deliberate creative liberties) and accidental mistakes (unforgivable inaccuracies). Good historical fiction uses constructive "lies" to serve the story; mistakes harm it.

P3A: Lying Done Well (Shakespeare as Model)

Not all lies are acceptable—some are too obvious or off-putting—but well-done lies are necessary. Shakespeare intentionally distorted facts for emotional impact, which made his plays memorable.

11.

Which one of the following is a principle applied to historical fiction in passage A that the author of passage B would be most likely to regard as not applicable to the genre of autobiography as well?

  1. Correct

    A mistake, as opposed to

    Why this is right

    This ends up being the most supportable answer. Would Passage B say that an unintentional mistake in recollecting events of your life is unforgivable? No. She is appreciative of how falsely we remember things, how unreliable memory is. She has a qualifier of "even when I know a memory is incorrect ...", suggesting that in many cases we don't realize that our memory is incorrect. In those cases, we would be telling unintentional lies, but the author of Passage B wouldn't be troubled by it. She would defend them on the basis that the author still feels the accidental lie to be emotionally true and that's what the reader of an autobiography is really reading for.

    Skill tested: Principle · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.

    61% picked this

  2. The creation of a good

    Unsupported Disagree Position

    This is essentially the shared main point. Passage B would definitely think this is applicable to autobiography.

    12% picked this

  3. Knowingly presenting false details is

    Fails A

    Fails A: Not One of Passage A's Principles As we've covered in several questions, Passage A never gets into ethics, so Passage A has never applied this principle to historical fiction.

    9% picked this

  4. Lying successfully requires an author

    Fails B: Unsupported Disagree Position

    We know that Passage A does apply this principle to historical fiction, but there's nothing in Passage B about subtle vs. obvious lies, so we have no text to directly support that Passage B thinks successful lying in autobiographies is often obvious or unconvincing. We have some fuzzy support if we really stretched, but choice (A) doesn't require as much stretching, so it's a better answer.

    10% picked this

  5. Skillful distortion can make the

    Unsupported Disagree Position

    This sounds too much like the shared main point of both passages.

    7% picked this

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