Ethics versus morality: the case of Joe Cinque's Consolation

Creative nonfiction writers, intent on being creative and tnithful, walk a thin line that other writers might not necessarily confront. Journalists and scholars, with their proclaimed dedication to fact, tend to avoid the ambiguities of memory, imagination and emotional allegiance. Fiction writers, with their dedication to stories have no qualms about inventing worlds that are seductive to their readers. But creative nonfiction writers, with the intent to write stories that are both true and seducing, grapple with specific issues of ethical and aesthetic integrity. This question is particularly complicated when sensitive issues, such as mental illness, become the focus of storytelling. Prompted by my reading of Helen Garner's (2004) Joe Cinque's consolation, this paper considers some of the possibilities, implications and hazards of representing mental illness in creative nonfiction. In particular I argue that as the experience of alterity, mental illness cannot be narrated within the parameters of reason and that it is therefore the responsibility of the creative nonfiction writer to honour this alterity. I suggest that the problem with Garner's book resides in the identification between authorial voice and some hypothetical reasonableness, ordinariness, or normality.