There’s a profound saying, “The best liars are: actors and actresses, fiction writers, politicians.
Actors and actresses? What could be a more radiant lie than pretending to be someone else on stage or screen? I mean, you are you, who you are, and being somebody you’re not is a lie performed, hopefully, well enough your deceit makes a captive audience-who knows who you are- believe you’re somebody else.
I’m an actress. I love to act. I’m the sort of actress who suffers opening night nerves every night. My knees knock.I shiver and shake. I’m miserable. Then the curtain goes up, or I make an entrance, and- whoop-de-do- I’m somebody else. Bettejo’s back stage, knees knocking, quaking, miserable. The most difficult role I ever played was Fonzia Dorsey- in The Gin Game- a self-righteous over- the- hill diabetic in a seedy old folk’s home who I really disliked. There was a humorous quality here but a nastiness slopped through.
Fiction? I love writing fiction. I get lost in the story. I love or hate my characters, but every word I put on paper, page after page, is a lie. This is true of any piece of fiction written by any writer. The scary part of this is when the book is published and you wait for the reader’s response. You hope he or she loves it as much as you.
Politicians? Skip it.
The interesting part about fiction and acting, however-the hidden dimension-is that these lies are creative endeavors. One is using the ‘gift’-or curse- to lie in a positive manner. No harm is intended. A story is to be told. A play to be performed. The theater goer has come to the theater to be fooled-transported, lost for a while in an other world-as does the reader to a book.
A fictitious piece of story telling is fantasy and the writer hopes the reader joins her on the journey she’s concocted. Some stories are so compelling the reader-and the writer- may want to read it over and over. My husband read Franny and Zooey once every year. A reader wrote of Salinger that he didn’t think he’d like him because he was such an incredibly believable liar. He missed the point, of course. Salinger told his lies on paper.
As a writer I’d rather make people laugh. Laughter is good. I think The THE SCAM is a cute, funny, piece about life in the 60’s on Kauai. CHILDREN of the EXTINCTION takes a hundred and 180 degree turn. Kauai, in the future, is not funny. But the characters are very human and laughter is a very human quality. Even in some of the scariest scenes, they find laughter. They also find every emotion humans can experience. Evil emotions as well. CHILDREN is a most controversial book. I come down hard on a subject one is not supposed to come down on. There is a Dark Side. That’s part of the story-telling experience. Will the Dark Side win?
If you read me on Amazon, scan through SCAM first.
bettejo 