Lying, or Storytelling, as Antidote to Unhappiness in Robin Klein’s Hating Alison Ashley and Anne Fine’s A Pack of Lies and Goggle-eyes

Abstract

Lying and poetry are arts – arts, as Plato saw, not unconnected with each other – and they require the most careful study, the most disinterested devotion. — Oscar Wilde, The Decay of Lying

A great man – a man whom nature has constructed and invented in the grand style – what is he? ... He rather lies than tells the truth; it requires more spirit and will. — Nietzsche, Will to Power

Wilde and Nietzsche posit lying as an artistic form of self-expression, done knowingly, purposefully and with attention given to form and detail. Lying frees the liar from the constraints of truth, moving him or her into the higher realms of deliberately-conceived art and away from the grim realities of unpolished nature. In Robin Klein’s Hating Alison Ashley (1984) and Anne Fine’s Goggle-eyes (1989), this grim reality comes in the form of the introduction of an alien element into the young protagonists’ families: the boyfriend, and potential husband, of their mother. For both Erica and Kitty, lying, spinning a good yarn or telling tales constitutes their chosen way of mitigating the unhappiness that results from this unwanted addition to their families. Storytelling allows the girls to create a space within which to negotiate their relationships with their soon-to-be extended family, and ultimately integrate into the family circle the person whom they feel has threatened the stability of their family. This space for negotiation is humorous, and takes the form of an imaginatively constructed alternative or exaggerated reality: a space of liberating make-believe, in which the girls can distance, and de-familiarise, themselves from the truth of their situations. I am drawing here on the account of ‘make-believe’ offered by Eric Prenowitz:

Make-believe is not a mode of measured philosophical enquiry. It is not for real, only a game. Something children do, for the fun of it. Readers likewise, and theatergoers. It engages knowingly in untruth and a certain artificial reality. One never makes believe unintentionally or by mistake. It therefore supposes a conscious, self-present, responsible subject—but only to divide itself, to absent itself, without any possible response, from itself. (2006, p.148)