Factual Fiction

I've enrolled in an online course on Laura Ingalls Wilder.  I decided it would be fun because, like most little girls I fell in love with the Little House books when I initially read them as a child.  For my 8th birthday, my parents gave me a complete boxed set of the books.  I was so excited, and the box set still has a place on my bookshelves, though I admit that I traded in the well-read copies of The Long Winter and These Happy Golden Years from the box set for hardcover editions I bought on a trip to Wilder's home at Rocky Ridge Farm outside of Mansfield, Missouri.  And in the intervening years, I have read those hardcovers just as much as the remaining paperbacks from the box set, if not more.  I re-read the series when I have need a visit with old friends.

In preparation for the course, I read the professor's book, Laura Ingalls Wilder:  A Writer's Life (not surprisingly, also required reading for the class).  This may or may not have been a mistake, because I found the author was highly incensed, almost to the point of being unreasonably angry that Ms. Wilder left out whole portions of her life in the series, AND that the series was not completely, factually, true.  As the Wilder expert the author/professor claims to be, I find the book's tone to be odd.  Most authors of biographies seem to like their subjects much more than this one.  This book definitely has an angry tone as though the author is still holding on to the anger she felt at learning that the Little House books are not strictly biographical or truthful.  The class so far is really focusing more on the parts of Wilder's life that she chose to leave out of the books than the parts that are in the books.

I had read a biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder by another author and I knew that there were parts of Wilder's life story that she left out of the books.  I never really considered why she chose not to revisit those parts of her life.  It was not important.  Additionally, if I were to write a biographic series of books on my life, parts would be fictionalized, if only to make the story flow better.  Unfortunately real lives are not plotted, so there is no linear story progression.  Steam-of-consciousness is how we live our lives, but it really doesn't make for the most widely accessible or appreciated books.  Leisure reading usually has a plot, or at the very least a linear progression to the story.  But the bigger issue here is that Wilder's books were never, that I know of, marketed as a factual autobiography.  Some people may have assumed they were, but I have only ever seen them as fiction.  In the same way that L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables and Emily of New Moon series are based on the author's real life but are in no way anything but fiction.  If the author/professor misunderstood the series of novels, it's not my fault.  But it's long past time to let go of the indignation at being "duped" into believing it was actually, really, honestly true.

I'm torn between continuing the class and just dropping it because I don't really care for the professor or  the feeling that she wants everyone else to be as outraged as she is.  I dropped a class in college because the professor came in the first day and declared that he was "God" as far as Western Civilization mattered to us.  That kind of attitude does not seem open to discussion and certainly makes it seem like I'd fail if my essays disagreed with his beliefs.  And while the class I'm taking now is just for fun, I'm not really having fun.  I'm still deciding what to do.  I'll give it another week…