Is everyone copy?

My mother didn’t want me engaging with therapy for the same reason she didn’t like the idea of me doing stand-up comedy. You’ll just talk about me, she said. You’ll make fun of me. I promised her that I had sadder things to bring up in therapy and funnier things to say in stand-up. She’s not entirely wrong about the fact that I like talking about her. Here I am, talking about her. This subject is often on my mind when I write, though. When does someone’s story in your life – their words, actions, presence – stop being theirs alone and start being a part of yours? What are the parameters for artistically churning someone else’s story into something worth a read, a watch, a listen? Woody Allen explores this idea in the film Deconstructing Harry. Truman Capote and Nawal El-Sadawi toy with the ethics of novelizing true crime. Gay Talese shows us you can write a fifteen-thousand-word profile about someone you’ve not even met. Everything is copy, says Nora Ephron. After she dies, her son…