On how to read Palin's book, Fish nails it quite easily.
My assessment of the book has nothing to do with the accuracy of its accounts. Some news agencies have fact-checkers poring over every sentence, which would be to the point if the book were a biography, a genre that is judged by the degree to which the factual claims being made can be verified down to the last assertion. “Going Rogue,” however, is an autobiography, and while autobiographers certainly insist that they are telling the truth, the truth the genre promises is the truth about themselves — the kind of persons they are — and even when they are being mendacious or self-serving (and I don’t mean to imply that Palin is either), they are, necessarily, fleshing out that truth. As I remarked in a previous column, autobiographers cannot lie because anything they say will truthfully serve their project, which, again, is not to portray the facts, but to portray themselves.
The questions to ask then are (1) Does Palin succeed in conveying to her readers the kind of person she is? and (2) Does she do it in a satisfying and artful way? In short, is the book a good autobiographical read? I would answer “yes” to both.
Fish insists we need not bother with questions of reliability in any traditional sense precisely because these aren't the criteria by which the book is to be judged. Not just by "impartial reviewers", of which there are sure to be few. The question forced upon the reader of the autobiography is one not of "truth" in some verifiable sense, but Truth as a property of one's life. More than just integrity as a condition of singularity of purpose and vision and practice. In the sense meant here, Truth is something that one possesses that is a condition for integrity, gives strength in times that challenge the desire to live it out, and is recognizable to those who share it in their own lives. This is Truth not as something that is factually accessible; this is the Truth that Palin and her admirers understand lies at the heart of our common life as Americans.
Unlike liberal elitists, with their penchant for fact-checking and defining reliability as something that has nothing to do with personal integrity (also not defined with any reference to anything outside one's own sense of oneself), Palin understands, and communicates to her readers, that the threats to our country do not lie in abstractions like global warming or the still faltering economy. Rather, the real threat to America, far more sinister and dangerous precisely because it is cloaked in the rhetoric of concern and a kind of patriotism, comes from those who do not understand that reliability is a personal quality, Truth is a possession, and integrity is the drive that keeps one from succumbing to doubts in the face of outside criticism. Rather than consider criticism as a constructive discussion with others, Palin simply dismisses any and all criticism of her life-choices, at a professional level, as coming from those who do not understand how she is living out, with integrity grown from the inner light of Truth.
As a cultural artifact, then, Palin's memoir is important as a demonstration of the persistence of a kind of child-like refusal to submit one's life to the judgment of others. Rather than self-knowledge, or at least the kind of understanding that comes from wrestling with the doubts and differences of others, Palin's work stands out as a kind of defiant call to return to an earlier understanding of the self as something flowering from inside oneself. Should others not understand that, not see the way Truth and certain simple American values create a life that values family and mild ambition above all others, they are only revealing their own unAmericanness, their own adherence to alien views of Truth, their elitist concern with petty things like facts.
As a cultural and political artifact, then, Fish gives readers an understanding of Palin's book that should leave us pondering the question, "What next?"
