A
Shortly before his death, Marlon Brando was working on a series of instructional videosabout acting, to be called “Lying for a Living”. On the surviving footage,Brando can be seen dispensing gnomic advice on his craft to a group ofenthusiastic, if somewhat bemused, Hol-lywood stars, including Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn. Brando also recruited random people from the Los Angelesstreet and persuaded them to improvise (the footage is said to include amemorable scene featuring two dwarves and a giant Samoan). “If you can lie, youcan act,” Brando told Jod Kaftan, a writer for Rolling Stone and one of the fewpeople to have viewed the footage. “Are you good at lying?” asked Kaftan.“Jesus,” said Brando, “I’m fabulous at it.”
B
Brandowas not the first person to note that the line between an artist and a liar isa fine one. If art is a kind of lying, then lying is a form of art, albeit of alower order—as Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain have observed. Indeed, lying andartistic storytelling spring from a common neurological root—one that isexposed in the cases of psychiatric patients who suffer from a particular kindof impairment. Both liars and artists refuse to accept the tyranny of reality.Both carefully craft stories that are worthy of belief—a skill requiringintellectual sophistica-tion, emotional sensitivity and physical self-control(liars are writers and performers of their own work). Such parallels are hardlycoincidental, as I discovered while researching my book on lying.
C
A case study published in 1985 by Antonio Damasio, a neurologist, tells the story of amiddle-aged woman with brain damage caused by a series of strokes. She retainedcogni-tive abilities, including coherent speech, but what she actually said wasrather unpredict-able. Checking her knowledge of contemporary events, Damasioasked her about the Falklands War. In the language of psychiatry, this womanwas “confabulating”. Chronic confabulation is a rare type of memory problemthat affects a small proportion of brain-damaged people. In the literature itis defined as “the production of fabricated, distorted or misinterpretedmemories about oneself or the world, without the conscious intention todeceive”. Whereas amnesiacs make errors of omission—there are gaps in theirrecollec-tions they find impossible to fill—confabulators make errors ofcommission: they make things up. Rather than forgetting, they are inventing.Confabulating patients are nearly always oblivious to their own condition, andwill earnestly give absurdly implausible explanations of why they’re inhospital, or talking to a doctor. One patient, asked about his surgical scar,explained that during the Second World War he surprised a teenage girl who shothim three times in the head, killing him, only for surgery to bring him back tolife. The same patient, when asked about his family, described how at varioustimes they had died in his arms, or had been killed before his eyes. Otherstell yet more fantastical tales, about trips to the moon, fighting alongsideAlexander in India or seeing Jesus on the Cross. Confabulators aren’t out todeceive. They engage in what Morris Moscovitch, a neuropsychologist, calls“honest lying”. Uncertain, and obscurely distressed by their uncertainty, theyare seized by a “compulsion to narrate”: a deep-seated need to shape, order andexplain what they do not understand. Chronic confabulators are often highlyinventive at the verbal level, jamming together words in nonsensical butsuggestive ways: one patient, when asked what happened to Queen MarieAntoinette of France, answered that she had been “suicided” by her family. In asense, these patients are like novelists, as described by Henry James: peopleon whom “nothing is wasted”. Unlike writers, however, they have little or nocontrol over their own material.
D
The wider significance of this condition is what it tells us about ourselves.Evidently there is a gushing river of verbal creativity in the normal humanmind, from which both artistic invention and lying are drawn. We are bornstorytellers, spinning narrative out of our experi-ence and imagination,straining against the leash that keeps us tethered to reality. This is awonderful thing; it is what gives us our ability to conceive of alternativefutures and differ-ent worlds. And it helps us to understand our own livesthrough the entertaining stories of others. But it can lead us into trouble,particularly when we try to persuade others that our inventions are real. Mostof the time, as our stories bubble up to consciousness, we exercise ourcerebral censors, controlling which stories we tell, and to whom. Yet peoplelie for all sorts of reasons, including the fact that confabulating can bedangerously fun.
E
During anow-famous libel case in 1996, Jonathan Aitken, a former cabinet minister,recounted a tale to illustrate the horrors he endured after a nationalnewspaper tainted his name. The case, which stretched on for more than twoyears, involved a series of claims made by the Guardian about Aitken’s relationshipswith Saudi arms dealers, including meet-ings he allegedly held with them on atrip to Paris while he was a government minister. What amazed many in hindsightwas the sheer superfluity of the lies Aitken told during his testimony.Aitken’s case collapsed in June 1997, when the defence finally foundindisputable evidence about his Paris trip. Until then, Aitken’s charm, fluencyand flair for theatrical dis-plays of sincerity looked as if they might bringhim victory. They revealed that not only was Aitken’s daughter not with himthat day (when he was indeed doorstepped), but also that the minister hadsimply got into his car and drove off, with no vehicle in pursuit.
F
Of course, unlike Aitken, actors, playwrights and novelists are not literally attemptingto deceive us, because the rules are laid out in advance: come to the theatre,or open this book, and we’ll lie to you. Perhaps this is why we felt itnecessary to invent art in the first place: as a safe space into which our liescan be corralled, and channeled into something socially useful. Given theuniversal compulsion to tell stories, art is the best way to refine and enjoythe particularly outlandish or insightful ones. But that is not the wholestory. The key way in which artistic “lies” differ from normal lies, and fromthe “honest lying” of chronic confabu-lators, is that they have a meaning andresonance beyond their creator. The liar lies on behalf of himself; the artisttell lies on behalf of everyone. If writers have a compulsion to narrate, theycompel themselves to find insights about the human condition. Mario VargasLlosa has written that novels “express a curious truth that can only beexpressed in a furtive and veiled fashion, masquerading as what it is not. ”Art is a lie whose secret ingredient is truth.
Questions14 - 19
Reading Passage 2 has six paragraphs, A-F.
Choosethe correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.
Writethe correct number, i-viii, in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet.
List ofHeadings
i Unsuccess fuldeceit
ii Biologicalbasis between liars and artists
iii Howto lie in an artistic way
iv Confabulationsand the exemplifiers
v Thedistinction between artists and common liars
vi Thefine line between liars and artists
vii Thedefinition of confabulation
viii Creativitywhen people lie
14.ParagraphA
15.ParagraphB
16.ParagraphC
17.ParagraphD
18.ParagraphE
19.ParagraphF
Questions20 - 21
Choose TWO letters, A-E.
Write the correct letters in boxes 20 and 21 on your answer sheet.
20-21.WhichTWO of the following statements about people suffering from confabulation aretrue?
Questions22 - 23
Choose TWO letters, A-E.
Write the correct letters in boxes 22 and 23 on your answer sheet.
22-23.WhichTWO of the following statements about playwrights and novelists are true?
Questions24 - 26
Complete the summary below.
Choose NOMORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 24-26 on your answer sheet.
AaccusedJonathan Aitken, a former cabinet minister, who was selling and buying with.Aitken’s case collapsed in June 1997, when the defence finally foundindisputable evidence about his Paris trip. He was deemed to have his. They revealedthat not only was Aitken’s daughter not with him that day, but also that theminister had simply got into his car and drove off, with no vehicle in pursuit.
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