the legend of janet damita jo jackson

show me a hero—i'll write you a tragedy

square one.

It’s a lot. All the genres and titles and the terms and conditions of each. Journalism — the first draft of history. Narrative nonfiction. Journaling. This …newsletter writing. Criticism (a weird label; it implies negativity). Memoir and autobiography. As-told-tos. Novels. Short stories. Songwriting. Obituary. Biography. Playlists. “AI” as hell, as science fiction, as the “future.” Fables, and other tall tales. Playwright. Screenwriter. Poetry. History. Plus the merges and reductions and remixes of all. What I want to do — what most of us want to do — is just tell a story, good and true.

A recent piece at The Conversation, asks, “When the facts conflict with the legend — how does a biographer balance storytelling with the truth?”

Biography is about making an argument for a particular account of a person’s life and times, while acknowledging the limitations of doing so, and the doubts inherent in the attempt. In the conflict between the facts and the legend, the question bec…