Creative Nonfiction Techniques: Perhapsing and the Truth of Gaps in Memory or Knowing
By Lexi Lilly •
Growing up, I was scared to swim in Kentucky Lake, a reservoir created after the construction of Kentucky Dam, just outside my hometown of Murray. One day, my fiancé wanted to go cliff jumping, having grown up nowhere near a lake, and when we got there, I refused to climb up, to jump, reluctant to get in the water in general. As I climbed down the boat ladder with shaky limbs, my grandmother called from a donut floaty in the murky water, “You can’t be afraid’a what may hurt you out here. That’s no way to live.”
Except, that is not exactly what my grandmother said. In fact, I am not sure if she said anything at all—I only based this dialogue on what I would assume my grandmother would say in a situation like this. She liked to sit in floaties in the water and give me advice on facing my fears. So with a lifetime of encounters and memories with her, I did not think her saying something like this was far-fetched. Her lifelong advice to me was never to be scared, and so she helped me conquer my fear of lakes and lonely forests and descending entire mountains. I do not think it was unethical to write that she spoke these words because, in a way, the dialogue carries truth.
I am not the only writer to utilize perhapsing—in fact, it can be traced back as far as Seneca in ancient Rome and is seen in religious texts like the Bible (such as Noah and the ark or Jonah and the whale, as these stories are secondhand accounts). Some may argue the ethics of perhapsing in creative nonfiction, as the idea of “making stuff up” is the exact opposite of telling the truth. However, the term was first identified by Lisa Knopp in 2009, and it is used by writers to acknowledge the gaps in their memory or knowledge and to introduce imagination into their writing, allowing for a more honest narrator and portrayal of personal or historical events. After a writer acknowledges the fallibility of a human mind, readers are willing to follow their narrator just about anywhere because they trust them to be honest, not just to tell the truth (there is a difference). In Elena Passarello’s collection, Animals Strike Curious Poses, perhapsing is used generously to convey the interwoven process of human and animal evolution, and how, over time, humanity has distanced itself further and further from animals and Mother Nature in general. Animals Strike Curious Poses evokes all the senses, placing the reader in the prehistoric mammoth steppe, Darwin’s ship during his explorations, on the medieval streets of London, and in outer space with the Skylab III crew, all over the span of two hundred pages. The human/animal connection and its exploration over tens of thousands of years is achieved effortlessly by Passarello, and it is likely because her collection is absurdist, allowing for more imaginative theorizing.
Muhammad Nadeem suggests absurdism arose from the existential crises of the twentieth century—specifically, the terrors of World War II. At its core, absurdist literature’s purpose is to highlight the elusive nature of life and humanity’s struggle to find a purposeful existence in this chaotic world. With a rapidly growing technological presence and humanity’s extreme disconnection from the natural world, it is evident why absurdist literature is growing in popularity. The article “Absurdist and Surrealist Literature” suggests that “while absurdism is a philosophy, surrealism is more of a creative tool” that serves to “assist the absurdist objective.” This is done by using unusual language, characters, and narrative structures. Since absurdism can be jarring or difficult for readers to digest, Passarello weaves between absurd and rational essays to offer some grounding amid all the chaos. This tactic creates rhythm and teaches the reader how to approach the collection. The absurd-rational-absurd jump and its gradual unraveling is integral to the collection’s narrative structure, as it prepares the reader for one of the most absurd, and possibly dense, essays in the collection—“Harriet (1835).”
Immediately, “Harriet (1835)” is jarring with the insertion of “you” into the narrative, as Passarello places the reader in the shoes of a tortoise with the utilization of the second person—“A huge man lumbers past with a fifteen-stone turpin on his back, its arms and legs tied into shoulder straps and its shell like a pack. You tuck yourself in, little girl.” Yes, this is an essay about Darwin and turpin-gutting, but more so, it is about the tortoise (and “you” are a tortoise named Harriet) as a timekeeper, showing the passage of time and the hands through which the tortoises pass. An uncomfortable essay, the story is told in-scene through the male gaze, with the tortoise being representative of women—“I’ve been out in the garden since October. He took a wife the week we docked. A wife!”—with even more uncomfortable language being employed with, “‘Ladies?’ he gestures to the women around you. ‘I’ve saved the best for last. Isn’t she a beyoot? Harriet is her name….’” This is a liberal example of perhapsing, as this dialogue, similar to the dialogue with my grandmother at the lake, isn’t exactly what was said. In fact, some of the dialogue happens amongst the tortoises—something that is scientifically impossible—all to help the reader understand the suffering of animals through humanity’s lens.
The biggest question is: Why does Passarello employ such jarring tactics to help the reader understand animal suffering? The answer is not simple, but it is likely to give a voice to those who do not have one. As readers, we could easily delve into history books or scour the internet for journal articles on these animals—all traditional nonfiction—but stepping into the lives of others, a time portal into the past, allows for deeper understanding and compassion. In “Arabella (1973),” the reader is placed in outer space with a spider named Arabella to see how she may build webs in a zero-gravity environment. Throughout the essay, the reader becomes emotionally connected to Arabella with observations like, “Each new web held the planet tighter in her grip. Only Arabella could bridge the distance between all earthbound creatures and the incomprehensible developments of Skylab,” so that when Arabella dies on the journey back to Earth, and “she’s now item A19740484001,” a “rare logged item on display that is listed as ‘organic matter’,” our hearts break a little for the creature’s lost life. Passarello achieves this emotional resonance by placing the reader in outer space with Arabella, allowing them to see a glimpse into what her mind was “perhaps” thinking.
Passarello places the reader in these times and minds so when she raises perplexing questions, such as, “What, asks the brain, is tangible in one hundred years, let alone a century repeated four hundred times?” in “Yuka (39,000 BP),” we can contemplate the passage of time and its historical elements with understanding beyond the perspective of a mere studier or observer. We are meant to question the nature of existence alongside Passarello, and this is not only done through the questions posed, but also through the acknowledgment of misinformation and the lack of fact-checking historically. Passarello explores absence of facts on the specific animals written about in her collection through the avenue of perhapsing in “Ganda (1515)” with medieval Europe’s (specifically Dürer’s) inaccurate depictions of the rhinoceros, writing, “Dürer has managed to represent both bodies—biological Ganda versus mythic RHINOCERON—and both realities—the natural versus the imagined—with a timeless artistry.” On the surface, this seems counterintuitive, but in actuality, it is the most effective way to portray how lore surrounding these curious animals became so construed—because humanity sees whatever it wants to see—depictions that are “made of what we wonder, what we want, and what confuses us,” all to further drive the narrative of the separation between human and animal.
Without the use of perhapsing, Passarello would not have been able to highlight the experiences and suffering of famous animals, whether it be a prehistoric woolly mammoth or a pinky-sized spider floating in the cosmos. With a rapidly growing technological presence and humanity’s extreme disconnect from the natural world, Animals Strike Curious Poses is a timely exploration of the consequences of the human/animal divide. Through absurdist philosophies that dissect the transient nature of life and surrealistic craft techniques like unusual language or narrative structure, Passarello is able to paint a story of famous animals and the ways in which humanity intersects with them by perhapsing medieval rhinoceros first-accounts and Darwin’s exhibitions through the eyes of Harriet the turpin. And whether it be a grandmother encouraging her granddaughter to cliff-jump, or a century-old tortoise seeking the male validation of her captor, the writer’s purpose in perhapsing is not to fool or misguide the reader—it is to be honest, to be as truthful as possible, and to acknowledge any gaps in recollection or knowledge. Animals Strike Curious Poses teaches the reader that humanity is not perfect, and with that, neither are our memories.
LEXI LILLY is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. She is also the managing editor for Punk Eek, a new online environmental literary magazine. You can find her on Instagram @_lexililly.
