Hasan Minhaj, truth and lies in creative non-fiction

Hasan Minhaj said: “In my work as a storytelling comedian, I assumed that the lines between truth and fiction were allowed to be a bit more blurry.” (Photo via X)

Last week, Hasan Minhaj dropped a video that wasn’t meant to be funny. This was the stand-up comic’s rebuttal of a recent New Yorker article which concluded that he had fabricated a series of personal events he spoke about during his shows over the years.

The article, for example, questioned the accuracy of Minhaj's story about being stood up by his date, a white girl, on prom night. It also raised doubts about other stories, such as an FBI informant trying to entrap Minhaj and his friends at a mosque, and an incident years later when he had to rush his daughter to the hospital after receiving an envelope with white powder, which he believed was anthrax.

“The nature of storytelling, let alone comedic storytelling, is inventive,” said the New Yorker. “Its primary aim is to make an impression, to amuse or to engage. But the stakes appear to change when entertainers fabricate anecdotes about current events and issues of social injustice.”

Minhaj’s response was that there’s a difference between his news-based shows, where “the truth comes first”, and his stand-up acts, where “the emotional truth” is primary. An important distinction. The prom incident did take place; it’s just that he compressed the timeline to make it appear that he heard of his rejection while at the girl’s doorstep.

The run-in with the FBI agent never occurred, but he did have altercations with undercover law enforcement while growing up. And although the alarming letter did exist, he didn’t take his daughter to the hospital because he realized after opening it that that the contents were not real anthrax. The artistic intent, Minhaj said, was to “recreate that feeling — that only Muslims felt — for a broad audience, the feeling of paranoia and vindication, tension and release.”

The New Yorker responded to his response. “Hasan Minhaj confirms in this video that he selectively presents information and embellishes to make a point: exactly what we reported.” Our piece, they went on, “was carefully reported and fact-checked”.

Whether you find Hasan’s shows funny or cringeworthy, this imbroglio is linked to a larger issue: the definition of truth in creative non-fiction, of which memoiristic comic writing is a subset. Creative non-fiction: what is the nature of this beast? It’s a label applied to non-fiction that uses the techniques of fiction to create its effects. These include compression, scene-setting, dramatic dialogue, and character development.

Such work came to the fore in the 1960s and '70s, especially with the work of Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, and Tom Wolfe, pioneers of the so-called New Journalism. Capote’s In Cold Blood, Mailer’s The Armies of the Night and Wolfe’s The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby are some classics of the genre.

Many writers of creative non-fiction have been accused of playing fast and loose with the facts. Some critics alleged that Capote changed incidents to suit the story of In Cold Blood, added scenes that never took place, and manufactured dialogue. Earlier, biographers suspected that George Orwell didn’t actually shoot the creature he wrote about in Shooting An Elephant. More recently, David Sedaris’s work has been fact-checked and found wanting, which he doesn’t entirely deny: “I exaggerate wildly, for the sake of the story. Mostly in dialogue.”

Where does one draw the lines between exaggeration, fictional technique and outright fabrication? Clearly, the incidents being written about shouldn’t be entirely made up; there has to be a kernel from which the writer spins a narrative. For Roy Peter Clark, there are two cornerstone principles: “Do not add. Do not deceive.”

Eileen Pollack, writer and former director of the MFA Program at the University of Michigan, is firmly on the side of non-embellishment: “The reason we label our work ‘nonfiction’ is we want readers to know this shit actually happened,” she feels. “This is the truth about what people do to each other; this is what rarely gets said; this is what it means to be a human being.”

Others such as John D’Agata are more inventive, creating narratives that rise above reporting. This comes through vividly in his much-discussed book, The Lifespan of a Fact. “It’s called art,” he says, asserting that you can’t judge such work for playing with the facts.

Some have faced severe consequences for employing this approach, especially when it comes to memoir. A notable example is James Frey, whose A Million Little Pieces was hailed upon publication for its depiction of drug abuse and rehabilitation. When it came to light that many parts were simply made up, Frey fell from grace overnight. He was vilified, his work disparaged, and future editions contained disclaimers from both the publisher and author.

Lee Gutkind, who has done a great deal to promote creative non-fiction, takes a judicious approach. Rounding corners or compressing characters or incidents isn’t wrong, he feels – but these practices need justifiable reasons. “Making literary decisions based on good narrative principles is often legitimate,” he writes. “But be careful and give your actions significant thought. No harm in trying and experimenting but consider the consequences to you and the people about whom you are writing.”

With comedy, the scope for such experimentation can certainly be wider. As Minhaj himself points out: “In my work as a storytelling comedian, I assumed that the lines between truth and fiction were allowed to be a bit more blurry.” Going forward, however, does he plan to be more thoughtful about sticking to the facts in his storytelling? His reply: “Absolutely.”