Good evening, my dear readers,
Today marks my last day as an intern with Beaufort Books. It’s been a whirlwind of a semester, but I’m so grateful that I had the chance to work here. From reading submissions, to brainstorming titles for upcoming books, to drawing upon my long-neglected and virtually-nonexistent math skills (suddenly I am no longer proud of the fact that I’ve not taken a math class since high school), interning at Beaufort Books has been an insightful and fun experience. I’m going to miss coming into the office next semester!
I’d like to muse today on a topic that only recently came to my attention: the genre of the non-fiction novel. Given that the genre label of non-fiction novel is something of an oxymoron, it’s not a surprise that this genre has attracted a fair amount of controversy among bibliophiles since its inception in the ’60s.
Truman Capote was the first writer to use this term in describing his novel In Cold Blood. Capote believes that the non-fiction novel is a book in which “reporting” facts is done in a manner where it is “made as interesting as fiction, and done as artistically.” He goes to great lengths to distinguish the non-fiction novel from New Journalism, a school of news writing that used literary techniques to report facts, remarking that such writers were primarily journalists and thus “useless” at achieving the “creative reportage” that he praises. Capote also distinguishes nonfiction novels from documentary novels, as the latter usually allow imagination to “run riot over the facts” (http://tinyurl.com/9lx9s). In Capote’s opinion, a true non-fiction novel would marry mastered literary techniques with pure hard facts.
The definition of the nonfiction novel has loosened a little since Capote first set down the genre’s parameters. Wikipedia defines the genre, for instance, as a work that portrays real historical events and people meshed with fictional conversations and literary devices (http://tinyurl.com/8255wwg). Merriam-Webster states that the nonfiction novel is a book-length narrative of facts told in the style of the novel (http://tinyurl.com/kkswcac). Encyclopedia Britannica says that it is a work that tells the story of real figures and events using the dramatic techniques of a novel (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/417684/nonfiction-novel).
While all of these definitions state similar things, they also differ enough to create continued confusion about what exactly the nonfiction novel is. Beyond the question of length, for instance, are there clear limits between creative nonfiction and the nonfiction novel? Or is the nonfiction novel meant to be a subgenre of creative nonfiction? What about the limits between the nonfiction novel and historical fiction novels? If a work of historical fiction uses both real and fictional people, is that enough to bring it into the realm of the nonfiction novel? And in writing down any fact with a creative spin, doesn’t that fact become fictionalized to a certain degree no matter how dearly the writer sticks to notions of reality? In recreating a conversation from memory, for instance, or in attempting to recreate a real event with particular verbs and adjectives that carry particular connotations, is it possible to say that creative nonfiction can be 100% objective anyhow?
If it’s not evident by now, I am of the bibliophile camp that remains skeptical of the nonfiction novel’s existence. While I am a big fan of creative nonfiction, I think it is silly to believe that any piece of creative writing can be completely factually accurate. I think it is even sillier to slap together a word as inherently self-contradicting as the nonfiction novel, given that a novel must, by definition, be fictional.
To play devil’s advocate for a moment, however, the word novel is increasingly being used as a term for any book, whether fiction or nonfiction (http://tinyurl.com/mmcpb3b). Language can and does change over time, so perhaps I should stop being such a traditionalist and not get too hung up on the fact that the term novel used to refer to a fiction work of a certain length, but might mean something else nowadays (or be on its way to meaning something else). And I can also understand the impulse to distinguish works of nonfiction written in a more literary style from those texts that deliver information in a clean-cut manner, such as college textbooks or traditional journalism. But I still have a hard time understanding the need to break a perfectly legitimate genre (creative nonfiction) into increasingly smaller bits.
In any case, I hope that this post has served as a good introduction to the controversy over nonfiction novels, because my time at Beaufort is officially over. While I’m sad to leave this place behind, I’m glad to leave with great memories of the past and great hopes for my future in publishing.
And, after all, tomorrow is another day.
All the best,
Scarlett Beau’Hara
