The Novel and the Memoir: Two Paths to Truth by Author David Z. Hirsch

Posted by Kathleen Pooler/@kathypooler with David Z. Hirsch

“The core of my writing is not art but truth.”~ Philip K. Dick, Picture Quotes.com

Photo Credit: www.elizabethchannels.com”Your Path to Truth”

Many memoir writers turn to fiction for reasons related to valid legal concerns and worries over the impact the story will have on real-life relationships. I am very pleased to feature author David Z. Hirsch in this guest post about why he chose to tell his story as fiction rather than as a memoir.  David is the author of Didn’t Get Frazzled, a provocative and humorous novel about four years in the life of an intrepid young medical student, set in the grueling world of an elite NYC medical school. When I read it, I felt it could have been a memoir for how real it seemed. 

My reviews can be found on Amazon, Goodreads, LibraryThings and RiffleBooks.

Welcome, David!

Author David Z. Hirsch

The Novel and the Memoir: Two Paths to Truth 

When Kathy offered me a guest post spot, I initially hesitated. Her guests examine memoir writing, and as a novelist, I wasn’t sure what I could bring to the discussion. But the more I considered it, the more I realized our experiences aren’t all that dissimilar.

 

To write Didn’t Get Frazzled, I had to recall my ordeal with medical school. Medical training had forced me to question my idealistic misconceptions of what it meant to be a doctor and tested how much of myself I was willing to abandon in order to be successful in such a surreal and stressful environment. This is an overwhelming circumstance for a young man just out of college, still unsure of his place in the world, still clinging to his collegiate sense of moral certainty.

 

Writing the book as a novel further complicated matters. A canon of literature exists for memoirs about medical training, but novels in this genre are rare. This created a conundrum for some skeptical reviewers as well:

 

“The author…is a doctor, and that made me puzzle a lot of the time over how much was true and how much of this story was made up.”

“Is this novel an autobiography? Probably not. Readers may be tempted to think so.”

One reviewer even docked me a star because she considered a scene too fictional:

“4 stars because of gyn part, that can’t be true.”

 

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Photo Credit: iStockphoto “Truth”

The gyn part isn’t true. None of it is. That’s why it’s novel. And yet, the book overflows with truths. Much like memoir writers, I strove to find deeper meaning in what was, for me, a traumatic experience. Writing is therapeutic. You cannot heal until you understand (and forgive) yourself. The only way to do this is to obtain a level of insight that is guaranteed to make you uncomfortable.

 

 

I have found no better way to compel honest introspection than to put fingertips to keyboard. But the result is often too raw, too explicit, too revealing. I could never have written Didn’t Get Frazzled as memoir, not if I ever wanted my words to see the light of day.

 

So I used fiction is a defense mechanism, a way to put distance between myself and my story. There are other advantages to fiction. Creating tension and keeping the story compelling is much easier when you can fabricate the details or devise any character you need for the scene. An interesting side effect emerged, one I harnessed whenever possible. By subverting reality, I found a way to mine a deeper truth. And herein lies the beauty of using fiction to expose fact.

 

I kept a journal during medical school, filling more than two notebooks with thoughts and ideas. I unearthed them many years later and wound up using almost nothing in them to write the novel. Still, the notebooks weren’t entirely useless. My words transported me to the emotional depths of the time – my frustrations, my fears, my flashes of success in the terrible crush of inadequacy – and I absorbed this in my writing. The scenes may be fictional, but I retained an emotional authenticity that many readers who have been through similar circumstances could recognize.

 

And by the way, the “gyn part” referred to above, is the scene were the instructor uses her own body as a model to have the medical students perform a gynecological exam. If you find that shocking and maybe a bit absurd, I agree with you, but that was the one part of the scene that was actually true. I don’t know if any medical schools still do this, but I hope they do. If you want to teach medical students to respect the women on which they perform gynecological exams, you can’t do much better than to have the instructor also serve as the model.

 

After two years of writing under a pen name, I am finally ready to come out of the shadows and publish under my own name. My second book is Jake, Lucid Dreamer, a middle grade novel that uses the genre of magical realism to explore healing after the loss of a parent. Like my first novel, this one hits close to home. Also, like my first novel, none of it is true. Yet on a more meaningful level, maybe all of it is. The most revealing fiction extends down that narrow fissure between authenticity and fact. If you look closely enough, you will find me there. Typing away.

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Thank you, David, for describing your writing journey so eloquently and honestly. You captured your own truth in a fictitious story that is both thought-provoking and entertaining and have shown us how to “find a way to mine deeper truths” through fiction. Thank you!

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Author Bio:

After graduating from Wesleyan University, David obtained his medical degree at New York University School of Medicine and trained in the primary care internal medicine program at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. Writing nights and weekends, he published the award-winning #1 Amazon bestselling novel Didn’t Get Frazzled, a work of humorous medical fiction for adults, under the pen name David Z Hirsch.

From there, David turned to children’s literature to pursue the themes of family, friendship and the magic of childhood that continue to inspire him. Jake, Lucid Dreamer is his first middle grade novel.

When he’s not writing, David toils in the front lines of primary care, battling scourges like diabetes, heart disease, and insurance companies, although probably not in that order. He lives in Maryland with his wife and two sons.

Author Contact Information:

Web site: http://DavidZHirsch.wordpress.com

Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/author/davidzhirsch

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29748682-didn-t-get-frazzled

Didn’t Get Frazzled Synopsis:

Medical student Seth Levine faces escalating stress and gallows humor as he struggles with the collapse of his romantic relationships and all preconceived notions of what it means to be a doctor. It doesn’t take long before he realizes not getting frazzled is the least of his problems.

Seth encounters a student so arrogant he boasts that he’ll eat any cadaver part he can’t name, an instructor so dedicated she tests the student’s ability to perform a gynecological exam on herself, and a woman so captivating that Seth will do whatever it takes to make her laugh, including regale her with a story about a diagnostic squabble over an erection.

Didn’t Get Frazzled captures with distressing accuracy the gauntlet idealistic college grads must face to secure an MD and, against the odds, come out of it a better human being. Cringe, laugh, fall in love, cringe some more…

If only medical school was actually this entertaining.

Praise for Didn’t Get Frazzled:

“…the best fictional portrayal of med school since ER.” – BlueInk Review, starred review

2017 International Book Award Bronze Medal Winner Readers’ Favorite (Fiction – Humor/Comedy) and INDIES Book of the Year Award Finalist (Humor)

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How about you? If you are a memoir writer, have you ever considered writing your story as fiction? If so, what factors went into your decision? 

We’d love to hear from you. Please join in the  conversation below~

 

This Week:

I’m honored to be interviewed about memoir writing on Nancy Julien Kopp’s Writer Granny’s World blog. Hope you’ll stop by.

 

Next Week:

Monday, 3/12/18:

“Mundane Details Matter: A Memoir Moment”