I have recently had my mind on the public’s fascination with reality. Whether it’s reality television, the news, or the latest celebrity scandal, people seem to be more involved in the personal lives of others now more than ever. As Beaufort Books is a publisher mainly of non-fiction, this appears to be working in our favor. Yet, there seems to be a line that those in the world of book publishing try to draw when it comes to the integrity and tastefulness of a story, a line that those in other media outlets often cross without a care. Certainly there are exceptions to this and tastefulness is not definitive. However, who else should uphold a standard when glossy gossip magazines are reporting that Khloe Kardashian might have a different father than Kim and Kourtney? Reality has become mediated and dramatized. I have for so long carried the notion that literary fiction was the ultimate art form, and yet I too occasionally find myself captivated by the latest scandal in the news. Not to say that there is anything wrong with this. The drama of other peoples’ lives has become the public’s new preferred form of escaping their own reality. People seem to be less interested in fiction, as the lines between public and private are increasingly blurred. So I ask myself, what is the role of non-fiction such as memoirs and biographies in all of this? They are not purely informative, nor are they pure entertainment. In reading them, we trust that they will reveal the truth. Perhaps it is the unreliability of fiction, of a fabricated story that can seem completely real as easily as it can seem completely false, that is turning us towards accounts of reality. Of course, it seems increasingly important to question the reliability of many sources of information and accounts of reality which claim to be true. Memoirs and biographies will never reveal a whole truth either, as they are written from the limited perspective of a subject. Nonetheless, I hope that people will continue to turn to these works of non-fiction to seek comfort and insight in an account of real life, when they are haunted by their mistrust of Selena Gomez’s publicist or the creators of the Jersey Shore.
-Violet Beauregarde
Tags: Books, literature, Non-Fiction, Reality