I beg to differ. ?In Cold Blood,? ?The
Executioners Song,? ?Hell?s Angels? and Joan Didion?s
?Salvador? are all usually considered non-fiction and sometimes even
journalism.
The difference between ?historical fiction? and
either the new journalism, creative non-fiction or non-fiction novel is
poorly defined in the intellectual community. Post-modernists like ?non-fiction
novel? as it explains how facts mixed with fiction can deliver a greater
truth. Traditionalists prefer ?historical novel? or something
similar as they, like you, do not accept the migration of the word ?novel?
to a different definition. Saul Bellow, another of the greats who died
relatively recently, argued for creative non-fiction and promoted it in the
relatively new journal he started at Boston University about a decade ago.
Oddly, all of the heroes of the form, whatever you call it,
actually preferred ?new journalists? or, in Thompson?s case, ?gonzo
journalist? as none of them were terribly enamored with any of the labels
that emerged from the prosodic aspects of their work.
The real controversies come when one tries to debate where Alan
Ginsberg?s and the works of other poets of the latter half of the
twentieth century poetry fall on the fiction/non-fiction scale. While
they contain many deep internal truths they tent to only be described as poetry
with no adjective attached as poets can?t be bothered with such debates
over criticism.
Have fun,
cdh
From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Amy Goldring
Tajalli
Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2008 8:59 PM
To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: My novel is finished!!!!
Chris,
Forgive me for being a strickler [stickler + strict] - based on your premise,
the fact that Lewis Carroll can combine words like this means that I should
also be able to do so. If you look up any of the books you sited in your local
library's card catalog, or check their category in the Library of
Congress, I feel certain that they will be categorized as fiction; not history
or non-fiction.
If you want to see musical drama based completely on history, I refer you to 1776
which has a source for every word in the play though they are not shown in the
footnotes. I take the authors' word for it that they found each and every
statement in historical texts though not necessarily in the exact context
but in contexts with the same meaning.
Every word in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats is taken from published poetry
or letters or, in a few unpubl ished letters or texts of T.S. Eliot which is
why there is usually no lyricist listed other than Eliot. Even Webber did not
have the audacity to put his name as lyricist or attempt to imitate the master
of such brilliant poetry.
Whatever Hunter and Keroac and others call their work, it is still classified
as fiction, just as Gabriel Garcia Maquez's "magical realism" of Love
in the Time of Cholera and 1000 Years of Solitude are novels. The
authors are describing their intentions and style, not an objective
classification of what they succeeded in writing. I know I sound pedantic and I
am probably being so but we need to be able to classify books by some objective
form so readers can find what they are looking for and what they are
reading. Even Sozhentsyn called his One Day in the Life of Ivan
Denysovitch a novel even though it was based on autobio graphi cal information.
Whenever you change from absolutely factual material you cease to be
writing non-fiction or history. I can call my cat a dog but that does not
change him into a dog.
Amy
----------- Original message from "Chris Hofstader"
<cdh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>: --------------
The non-fiction novel was sort of invented by Jack Kerouac in
?On the Road? where he mingled factual experiences that he and his
gang had enjoyed while mixing in purely fictional events, characters and scenes
that never really happened. This sort of blend, in a post-modernist way,
allowed truth to emerge from beyond the facts. For reasons that are well
documented, Kerouac?s career as a writer was cut short and he published
very little of merit after his single masterpiece.
Hunter Thompson, back in the fifties, started experimenting with
the form and is thought of as the father of the movement. With his
?Hell?s Angels? he inserted himself into what had been
intended to be a journalistic work, breaking the rules of journalism by removing
objectivity altogether. His ?Fear and loathing in Las Vegas took
the form even further and put truth well ahead of facts or reality.
Authors who soon followed and were highly informed by Thompson
include Joan Didion, Truman Capote (?In Cold Blood? being an
excellent example of the form), Norman Mailer who changed a lot in the sixties,
Tom Wolfe, Dom DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon and lots of others.
It's an interesting but dangerous form as one needs to be very
careful with the balance of factual and fantasy and the writer needs to
understand the limits of truth exposed outside of the facts.
It's also a fun form as you can add dialogue and drug induced
perceptions as if they were real but one needs to be careful that they remember
that the character(s) that are based on themselves are, in at least some part,
not really them or else an identity crisis will emerge.
There?s a pretty good and fairly recent book called
?The New Journalism: Thompson, Capote, Didion and Wolfe? I
can?t recall the author?s name but it explains this movement very
well.
cdh
From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Amy Goldring
Tajalli
Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2008 5:43 PM
To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: My novel is finished!!!!
Chris,
Other than being an oxymoron, what is a non-fiction novel??? Using such a term
to a writer named Hawthorne - Shame.
Amy
oms,
-------------- Original message from "Chris Hofstader"
<cdh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>: --------------
Congratulations!! I have about a half dozen non-fiction
novels in various stages of incompletion and find it very difficult to focus
and drive one home.
From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Nan Hawthorne
Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2008 6:41 PM
To: 21 Acres Yahooghroup; bls-vol-discusws; Historical Novel Society;
HNS-PS; IAG Members; selfpublishedHF; ST-advisory
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] My novel is finished!!!!
I will be uploading it to the publisher in the next few
days.
Let's see.. it just took me 27 months...
I will keep you posted on when it is available. Probably late
summer, will be on Amazon.
An Involuntary King: A Tale of Anglo Saxon England
By Nan Hawthorne
His father dead at a usurper's hands, the new young king must prove himself in
spite of his own self-doubt. Through years of setbacks and misfortunes,
he struggles on, while his queen, the love of his life, is relentlessly pursued
by a dark sensual mercenary.
http://crislicland.blogsspot.com
--
Cordially,
Nan Hawthorne, co-owner
medieval-novels.com (tm)
Your source for novels set between 500-1600 AD all over the world.
http://www.medieval-novels.com
Authors! List your books!
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