The Salt Path, Raynor Winn, and Unreliable Narrators

So, we don't like unreliable narrators anymore?

In literature, the unreliable narrator was once a postmodern novelty — a playful counter to realism’s godlike narrator. Today, though, in fiction especially, unreliability has become part of the reader’s expectation - particularly in first-person writing.

This change is not just a stylistic choice, but a decision by writers to honestly reflect how we behave. Liars are compelling narrators for lots of reasons — for the reader, it’s fun to be mislead, to not know exactly where the narrative is heading, to be reminded of ourselves (cause everybody lies a little).

In some ways, the world has grown more and more to accept liars. I could make a pithy observation of politics or social media to support that claim, about the post-truth era and whatever else, but these seismic lies find themselves supported by a nexus of more supposedly inconsequential gestures: consistently telling homeless people we can’t help them, or our friends that something has come up and our plans should be rearranged, telling our mothers we didn’t see their missed call, etc. These lies are at the bottom of a pyramid of hierarchy, at the top of which are, I don’t know, global conspiracies, corporate crimes, crimes against humanity, yada yada.

The contemporary acceptance of lying is upset by anomalies, with the public choosing to be outraged by particular lies, almost to excuse the others. This week, a bombshell report by The Observer accused author Raynor Winn of being dishonest in her best-selling non-fiction work, The Salt Path. This book details the journey of Raynor and her husband Moth around England’s South West coast after the loss of their house and Moth’s diagnosis with Corticobasal Degeneration. The Observer’s report is salacious, accusation Raynor of embezzlement and scamming, implying, even, that Moth’s diagnosis could be bunk. Raynor has hit back, replying with this statement.

I was speaking about this situation with my girlfriend this morning. We agreed that, in a post-truth context, where liars are growing constantly more shameless, the vitriol against Raynor leaves a little bit of a sour aftertaste. Here are three bigger lies I can think of, from just this last week, off the top of my head:

1. Trump (and the whole of America) pretending the Epstein list didn’t exist.

2. Netanyahu nominating Trump for the Nobel Prize (the lie being that Trump has been making peace)

3. The billions lost by HS2… Where is it? Seriously — where tf is that cash?

This doesn’t mean Raynor Winn is innocent. The Observer’s profile of Raynor and Moth is of two chronically dishonest people, consistently getting themselves in trouble with credit card companies, debtors, councils, even a local garage attendant, who claimed the couple still owe him £800. They seem to repeatedly have scammed and cheated people out of money, lying at every convenient opportunity.

That’s shitty – but in the context of writing, shittiness is not itself a problem. Literature is people with many, many, pricks, arseholes, criminals, villains, degenerates, and tricksters, because, you know, artists be like that. The difference between some of those shitty people and Raynor Winn, however, is a willingness to incorporate their personality flaws into their writing, to make it – for lack of a better word – part of their brand.

“In choosing to omit the truth, Raynor wrote a worse book.”

My hot take on The Salt Path beef is that, in attempting to protect herself from criticism, Raynor Winn has committed two literary crimes. The first is the (in my view) lesser crime, of having been a dishonest writer. Wholly honest writers are rare – exaggeration, invention, suggestion, omission and a million other tricks are part of a good writer’s toolkit. Setting on a path to purge writing of these tools is going to result in a world of boring books. That said, just as lies can be essential to good writing, truth is too. Raynor’s second, and biggest, writerly crime is to do with what I guess you could call a lack of writerly instinct: in choosing to omit the truth, Raynor wrote a worse book.

Let me state my case: a Bonnie and Clyde story, two former tricksters, deeply flawed and out of luck, on an Odyssey around The South West of England, where their experiences with the British people cause them to reevaluate the way they have been living, to repent, and start a new life. Now, that’s a book I would read. It has an arc, two complex characters, and vitally, knows how to use both fact and fiction to explore essential truths about humanity - that truth being, everybody feels better after a walk outside.

So, yeah. That’s the mistake Raynor made, in my eyes. She had a lack of foresight to understand that, in a world of journalists and people you have pissed off, the stories we tell about ourselves are destined to be challenged. Do I really care about what Raynor has done, though? No. In the grand scheme of things, it’s just not bad enough. I wouldn’t lend her a fiver though.