Hi,I don't look for the last word. I'm a refugee from the Harvard Square coffee shop scene, exiled to the distant planet that is Florida. this sort of discussion feeds my intellect and keeps my mind from atrophy while down here in a world where humanoids believe that "Beetle Baily" in the daily newspaper stretches one's intellectual capacities.It was kind of strange, a week before I moved here, I was sitting in the Greenhouse Coffee Shop with Cornell West and two of his students discussing which philosophical movement for art and discourse would follow post-modernism. A week later, I sat in a Checker's restaurant discussing Star Trek with a really nice guy who sadly hadn't read a book in years. If Ted Henter, Jerry Bowman and Eric Damery were any less great men, I would probably have packed it all up and moved back to New England within a week.I love discourse for the sake of it and, when carried on with respect and rational points of difference, I find few things more pleasing.I just ordered a used copy of, "The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight: Wolfe, Thompson, Didion, and the New Journalism Revolution" by Marc Weingarten from Amazon. I haven't read the book yet but I've heard the author interviewed a number of times and enjoyed his critical points very much.I'm still online with Amazon and haven't hit the check out button yet so any suggestions are welcome during the next hour or so.Chris HofstaderCUNY, BSO, ATG, Odds and Endsemail: cdh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxSkype: BlindChristianphone: 727-896-6393
Chris,
From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Amy Goldring Tajalli
Sent: Friday, June 06, 2008 9:43 AM
To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: My novel is finished!!!!
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
While Keroac is still considered, the other books you mention are now being listed as crime books or jounalism, biography, autobiography, or memoirs, or a number of other areas some gray, others non-fiction. And, while Wikipedia is not necessarily considered an absolute authority, it and Google recognize the concept of non-fiction novel even though also recognizing it as an oxymoron. All of the books other you mentioned, plus Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool Aid Acid Test are listed in that oxymoron. They are also sources for articles on the"genre".
One last comment. An author can call his/her book anything s/he chooses, time and librarians, and, most especially for our purposes, The Library of Congress usually have the last word.
Actually, you had the last word in that your assertion was proven correct.
Am y
o msm
-------------- Original message from "Chris Hofstader" <cdh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>: --------------
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-ownermedieval-novels.com (tm)Your source for novels set between 500-1600 AD all over the world.http://www.medieval-novels.comAuthors! List your books!
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