"As soon as we say 'I' we begin to lie." I'm very curious about this approximate quote of Shelley Jackson's. By extension we assume that, since Jackson is a writer and explores this quote in her writing, it can also be stated, "As soon as we write 'I' we begin to lie."

I'm curious about this not so much because I agree or disagree, but because I fail to see the importance. I have never seen pure objective truth as a goal of writing. Perhaps more so in a supposedly nonfiction autobiography (but even then not some inarguable mathematical kind of truth,) but never in a fiction, even one based on real characters. The goal is to take little snippets of truth, character tics such as a boy who expresses himself through his toes, and meld them together into a character that reads as true, regardless of whether he or she is or not. The truth that writing strives toward is the truth of empathy. The establishment of an emotional connection between writer and reader.

I happened across This Article on The New York Times website. The article describes the uncovering of a fictitious online personality, Lonelygirl15, who posted short video blog entries on youtube (a bunch of these videos are viewable here). Appearing to be a somewhat morose but otherwise ordinary teenage girl, she would record short monologues dealing with her frustrations with her parents, apparently random and quirky observations, and the small problems of her day to day life, which garnered a large and apparently somewhat fanatical following. Fans recently uncovered information that demonstrated that "Bree" is portrayed by an actress named Jessica Rose and does not in fact exist. A detailed narrative of the process behind these revelations (and fan reactions) may be found in the reporter's blog, linked from the article. Simply looking at the comments posted about her videos indicates that the backlash has been considerable (User dustincoffman, for example, opines "this bitch needs a dick in her mouth")