Pilgrim Stories

[Donald Schell]

dear friends,

I have been quietly reading our discussion of people appearing in books on
the Camino with a sort of voyeuristic (or at least lurker's) interest and
I'm not usually a lurker here.  Why was I reluctant to talk about this?

Neither Maria nor I asked anyone's permission to include them in our book,
My Father, My Daughter, Pilgrims on the Road to Santiago.

We were, however, careful to shape our own rules of inclusion in a way that
would be respectful of friends and at least fair and accurate for those few
who were not.  We did ask ourselves - if this passage came to the
character's attention and s/he recognized herself/himself would we regret
what we had written?  Would we feel found out or that we had misrepresented
or used the person?  We knew we weren't done with the writing if the either
one of those questions produced a 'yes.'

People appeared quite naturally in our book almost as soon as we began to
write.  I don't see how anyone could write a personal experience of the
Camino without including other pilgrims as well as other people along the
way (Jose of Taberna de Jose in Acebo, for example), since fellow pilgrims
are an important part of our pilgrim experience as is the hospitality of so
many of the generous people who welcomed and cared for us.  Wouldn't others
here agree?

We made a variety of different ways that people would appear.  Some needed
only a mini-description or perhaps only a decisive attribute.  We did
include perhaps half a dozen peoples' real names, but first names only.  In
every instance Maria and I agreed these were people we recalled with
affection and respect; we felt confident that our writing about them showed
that.  And I don't think we included anyone's intimate secrets.  We were
telling stories of pilgrim interactions.  The few stories of conflict and
uneasy dealings with others were important to our experience.  The people
who come off badly in those interactions appear without names.  Every
instance was one of judging or dismissing other pilgrims, jockeying for
position, bullying for a place in a refugio (and getting rightly rebuffed by
the hospitalero/a).  Might these people recognize themselves if they read
what we wrote?  Possibly.  I don't regret writing what happened and hope
it's helpful to other pilgrims.

Closer to home, my wife and older daughter and a passing reference to her
boyfriend (now my son-in-law) also appear as characters in our conversation.
My brief visit with my older daughter on the way to Spain is a mini-chapter.
These dear people were not on the Camino with us, but we carried them
gladly.  My weekly phone call home to my my wife, Maria's mother, also
appears.  We didn't even ask these people  for permission.

I have been very pleased to learn that a couple of times someone has read
the book, recognized a person we met on the way and passed the book on to
that person.

All this is the ordinary dilemma any writer of non-fiction, travelogue,
spiritual autobiography or memoir will face.  Morally, it's an issue of
truth-telling and avoiding self-aggrandizement.  And the danger of
'permissions' is that it has a writer looking over his/her shoulder.  Even
making composites and changing names wouldn't have avoided this, and for the
kind of writing we were doing, composites wouldn't have worked very well.

So this appears to me.

love,
donald
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