Beautiful lies my father told me

Abstract

‘There are two kinds of tales, one true and one false,’ Socrates proposes to Adeimantus in the course of exploring the proper place of literature in TheRepublic (1935: 376). In this short paper, I will explore Socrates’ propositionin the context of family storytelling, in particular in the case of my recently completed family memoir, Learning How to Breathe, which contains many instances of family storytelling. Some of these tales turned out to be true; some of them turned out to be false. And some of them turned out to be falsehoods that revealed a hidden truth. In order to investigate the sometimes blurred lines between what is true and what is false, I will examine one family story in particular; this family story was told - or, in this case, performed - by my father. To shed light on aspects of lies and truth that are revealed througha close reading of this story, as well as other issues of family storytelling that needed to be addressed while writing a family memoir, I will draw on thework of John Forrester, in particular Truth Games, as well as the work of Langellier and Peterson and Elizabeth Stone regarding family storytelling.