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<TITLE>Re: Pilgrim Stories</TITLE>
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dear friends,<BR>
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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? <BR>
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Neither Maria nor I asked anyone's permission to include them in our book, <I>My Father, My Daughter, Pilgrims on the Road to Santiago</I>. <BR>
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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.' <BR>
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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?<BR>
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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. <BR>
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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.<BR>
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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. <BR>
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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. <BR>
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So this appears to me.<BR>
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love,<BR>
donald
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