The Iowa Review
Volume 36
Issue 1 Spring
2006
Curiouser and Curiouser: The Practice of
Nonfiction Today
Phillip Lopate
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Lopate, Phillip. "Curiouser and Curiouser: The Practice of Nonfiction Today." The Iowa Review 36.1 (2006): 3-15. Web.
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Article 4
PHILLIP
LOPATE
Curiouser and Curiouser: The Practice ofNonfiction Today
Keynote
When
Iwas
address,
NonfictioNow
conference,
November
10, 2005
to speak at this conference
on nonfiction,
as
sandwiched
between
such
luminaries
safely
David Shields and other
Slater, Bob Shacochis,
first invited
I imagined myself
Pico Iyer, Lauren
participants.
distinguished
give the keynote address?a
Then
I discovered
that
The
I was
slated
to
term "keynote
horrifying prospect.
someone who will make
speaker" connotes
large generalizations
that sum up the field and boost the morale
of the troops. Political
conventions
usually turn to a rising star in the party, someone with
and glamour, a Barack Obama, not an old skeptic like me.
do my best to lift your spirits. Lord knows, nonfiction may
be in need of morale-boosting.
charisma
But Iwill
the very name of this thing we practice, a genre defined
or anti-matter.
it is not. Like the Uncola,
the Anti-Christ,
by what
In the last twenty years some attempt has been made
to cloak our
Consider
selves with
dignity by adding the word "creative" before nonfiction;
to saying ugood poetry." No one sets out to
is tantamount
Imyself prefer the more
write "uncreative nonfiction."
traditional
term
I
to
have
admit that
sounding
though
"literary nonfiction,"
a
bit of gratuitous
inse
"literary" is also
self-praise. Our boastful
a
in
the
world's
mirrors,
way,
curity
larger literary
condescending
but this
toward our area of endeavor. Every year the cash prizes
for the Whiting
and Rona Jaffe fellowships,
the Lannans and the
are
a
list of fiction writers
announced:
and
MacArthurs,
healthy
or
one
two
was
and
nonfiction
if
that.
When
the
last
writers,
poets,
attitude
time a Nobel
Prize was given to a nonfiction writer? Personal essay
even
as Edward Hoagland,
collections,
by such established masters
are
Mairs
and
Nancy
Joseph Epstein,
relegated to The New York Times
"Books In Brief" column, as though the whole
genre were a dodge
to get around writing
a real book.
of us who teach or study creative writing
in university
set
in
know
the
God
created
Fiction
and
that,
tings
beginning,
Poetry,
and saw that it was good; and then some whiners
started demand
Those
3
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courses.
across the coun
In my visits to campuses
ing nonfiction
I
have
been
who
stole
up to me like
try,
approached
by graduates
sect and told me of their struggles
members
of an early Christian
the first m fas
to receive
these were
for a creative
thesis; and even
as
not
meant
to be
awarded,
begrudgingly
though
a
are
visa. We nonfiction writers
the resi
passport,
only
nonfiction
often
a genuine
dent aliens
of academia.
Yet the curious
steady, even risen
est was attributed
in nonfiction
have held
thing is that enrollments
over
in places
the years. At first this student inter
to the memoir
"craze" (note how easily any inter
in autobiographical
prose, one of the oldest and most difficult
as a narcissistic
fad); but
literary practices extant, can be denigrated
had settled down, after
when
the hoopla about the "new memoir"
a marketplace
creative writing majors
and graduate
"correction,"
est
students
continued
to seek out nonfiction
courses.
I think
the main
is that many students experience
their own reality with more
than an imagined one. They think they have no imagi
confidence
nation and so they are better suited to nonfiction.
they
Eventually
it
of this misconception,
when
discover
that
will be disabused
they
reason
takes just as much
for these
to construct a meaningful
order and
imagination
lived experiences,
and an intriguing personality
to tell them, as to make up a new set. But in the
context
through which
that nonfiction
is easier can be
the misunderstanding
meantime,
to an otherwise
task.
fruitful in attracting candidates
daunting
no
sooner
writer
does
the
would-be
nonfiction
begin to
Today,
This envy
practice than a sort of "fiction envy" must be confronted.
the higher status that fiction
is not surprising, when you consider
in the literary pantheon.
But even if a student
is content
holds
virtues of nonfiction,
she will undoubtedly
creative writing
instructors along the way who tell her to
in scenes," for instance, or to use lots of images and
"put everything
or
to stay away from generalizations
and abstractions.
sense-details,
with
the
lower-status
encounter
of the short story workshop
Here, the more elaborated
techniques
over the still-evolving
of nonfiction:
have an advantage
pedagogy
can
text
into
the
clear, simple
by following
simply be plugged
they
in doubt, make
it a scene. Many nonfiction
instructors
rules. When
instilled with these
today received their m fas in fiction, and were
rules. One of the leaders of our field, Lee Gutkind, has even declared
is "you are trying to write
the
that the goal of creative nonfiction
4
it read like a short
truth and making
Donna
view with
nonfiction
In an inter
story or fiction."
this definition:
"Creative
Seaman, he provided
the nonfiction writer
allows
to use
literary techniques
such as scene-setting,
usually used only by fiction writers,
descrip
All
those
that
make
action, suspense,
tion, dialogue,
plot.
things
to tell
terrific short stories and novels allow the nonfiction writer
in the most
true stories
creative
cinematic
and dramatic way possible.
That's
nonfiction."
to start a polemical
wish
feud for provocation's
sake,
some
in
I'm
in
since
if he means
ways
agreement with Gutkind:
that a piece of nonfiction
should have a plot, suspense
and strong
in the case of the
characterization?even
character development
I don't
memoir?I'm
should
all for that. And
if he means
that the nonfiction
writer
an artifact, an artfully shaped
of constructing
a subjective as well as an objective component,
all the
if he means
to
that you should try as much as possible
be conscious
entity, with
better. But
sure you've
in scenes, and to make
everything
sprinkled
to
as
it
and
sense-details
make
"cinematic" as pos
try
everywhere
sible, and that you've stayed away from thoughtful
analysis because
it's "abstract," then, no, I don't agree.
render
it seems
shared boundaries,
are
and nonfiction
fundamentally
For all their
of fiction
to me,
the experiences
In the short
different.
the reader
story or novel, a fictive space is opened up in which
tends to disappear
into the action, even to the point of forgetting
one is reading. In the best nonfiction,
it seems to me, you're always
made aware that you are reflecting, by being engaged with a mind at
work, not falling into a dream. There is a strong plot, certainly, but
consists of the twists and turns of a thought
the plot in nonfiction
as
out. This is certainly true for the essay, but
it
works
itself
process
it is also true, I think, to much nonfiction
in general, which follows
an organizing
consciousness
What
encounter
makes
with
that can be
principle
of the author.
summarized
as: tracking
the
me want
to keep reading a nonfiction
text is the
a surprising, well-stocked
mind as it takes on the
of the next sentence,
challenge
paragraph,
sets itself. The other element
that keeps me
thematic
problem
it
is an
reading happily
evolved, entertaining,
elegant or at least highly intentional
literary
to bear on every passage.
of style is brought
style. The pressure
in my book.
Consciousness
plus style equals good nonfiction,
5
in reading nonfiction
is to
For me, as I say, the great adventure
as
a really interesting,
to
mind
it
unpredictable
struggles
a
or
even
a
in
frivo
itself
thorny problem,
entangle and disentangle
follow
lous problem that an interesting mind finds a way to make complex.
toward Gandhi, Robert
George Orwell reflecting on his ambivalence
on
his face, Seymour Krim on failure, Susan
Benchley meditating
on experience,
Stendhal on love, Montaigne
Sontag on photography,
on a room of one's own or
Norman Mailer on sex, Virginia Woolf
Edmund
Eiseley on the brown wasps,
on
of socialist
Wilson
Charles
Lamb
thought,
on
on
Gass
Didion
William
the
married
migraines,
couples, Joan
color blue.... None of these read like short stories or like screen
of a moth,
Loren
on the development
the death
plays,
but
they are: glorious
like what
mixed
thought-excursions.
tracts in with smaller
longer, book-length
purposely
to make the point that the pursuit of consciousness
of the short-sprint
personal
essayist.
prerogative
is almost
which
about
consciousness
something
is not
Indeed,
I have
essays,
just the
there is
infinitely exten
to
another, and another,
thought leads
sible?frighteningly
and pretty soon you have Robert Burton's
Anatomy
thousand-page
so. One
ofMelancholy.
Steiner
George
(Possible) Reasons
was that "thought
or (to use Steiner's
an essay recently which
he entitled
"Ten
for the Sadness of Thought."
The first he gave
is infinite," though because
it is subject to doubt,
wrote
can be no resolution,"
son was that thought
for which
there
"internal contradiction
words)
rea
it is an "incomplete
His
second
infinity."
is uncontrolled,
involuntary, and disorganized.
isolates us: no one can read our minds,
third is that thought
or think our thoughts
for us. (Notice, by the way, that each of the
reasons Steiner offers for why thought makes us sad could just as
At the same time, he says,
easily be seen as a cause for celebration.)
as thought cuts the individual off from others, almost everything
The
an individual
worlds.
is banal, unoriginal,
the worst of both
hence,
fourth reason is that there is an inherent collision
thinks
Steiner's
for thought to have one truthful, verifi
rational demands
and the tendency of language to suggest ambiguous,
able meaning
The fifth reason
is that thought
is
evasive, multiple
meanings.
even
two
in
Einstein
he
had
claimed
ideas
wasteful;
only
incredibly
his entire life and the rest was dross. The sixth reason for thought
between
to make
6
us sad is that it causes
us to have
fantasies
and unrealistic
which are then frustrated and disappointed
expectations
by reality.
more
Wait?I'm
reason:
we can
than halfway
Seventh
through.
not arrest thought,
it keeps going incessantly,
like our heartbeat,
and
it veils
as much
as
it reveals.
Eighth
reason:
thinking keeps
true empathy.
from one another, prevents
strangers
(I believe
at this point.) Ninth
Steiner
is starting to repeat himself
reason:
the enormous
between
clever people and dull-witted
ones,
disparity
and the near-impossibility
of teaching
skills of original
thinking,
us
leads to elitism
and profound
social injustice. And the tenth reason
sound
like
David
the capacity for thought shows its
(I
Letterman):
limits as soon as one tries to brood over the most
important ques
a
us
God?and
leads
into
or a
death,
tions?being,
glib agnosticism
dangerous
religious fundamentalism.
Have I cheered you up sufficiently? Have I raised group morale
yet? My point in all this is to suggest that the larger culture, and our
of nonfiction,
may be moving
specific subculture
away from con
for understandable,
if not laudable, reasons. If thinking
sciousness
on the page makes us sad, why do it? If all those semi-colons,
ideas
and oppositional
clauses slow us down, and keep us from the more
tactile pleasure of sense details and speedy dialogue and cinemati
scenes, hey, get rid of them!
cally imaginable
I can think of another
Steiner doesn't mention,
reason, which
us
or
sad,
rather, guilty, but why we so need
why thoughts make
to keep expressing
them. We may feel we know too much, or come
to know it too early. It's the burden of precocity. During
the years I
saw
a
I
children
that
taught
writing,
say, has
typical eleven-year-old,
inside himself or herself both a four-year-old who is still very baby
ish and imperious,
and a tired forty-year-old who knows the score.
to
the
adults have of them to behave
play
expectations
in a child-like manner,
as
but inside, they don't regard themselves
I grew up with the guilty sense that
innocent, so much as confused.
a part of me was faking
a
Iwas already an old soul. Lots
child;
being
of people are like that, particularly people who become writers, but
then, so I had to figure it out on
nobody told me Iwas not unusual
Children
my
own.
Consciousness
makes
us aware
that we
are divided,
are made
of
children, caught in the
many disparate,
parts. When
contradictory
act of doing something wrong,
insist "It wasn't my fault," what
do they mean
it was
exactly? One part of them knows very well
7
it isn't, because
it's
their fault, and another part of them believes
as to have tempted them
the fault of a world so poorly constructed
act. A part of them wants
to believe
into a wrongful
that they are
innocent
angels, as adults tell them they are, just as the
are already
tell them Santa Claus is real. But they themselves
not from
conscious. And guilt and shame come from consciousness,
narrator in Notes From Underground asserts
doing evil. Dostoevsky's
indeed
adults
is a disease." Of course the Underground
Man
a disease he wouldn't
is boasting
and proud of his consciousness,
mind
infecting everyone with.
If consciousness
isolates, it also heals, consoles. My own writing
that "consciousness
now go
is saying, or trying to, in effect: "This is my consciousness,
If you are hav
off and don't feel so guilty about your consciousness.
antisocial
perverse, curmudgeonly,
thoughts, know that
ing wicked,
are having them also." Just being conscious,
aware of the
of others and self-aware of one's idiosyncratic
peculiarities
thought
others
from moment
patterns
that more
understand
to moment,
engenders
guilt. I've come to
and more, by working with and teaching the
personal essay.
Let me speak of another guilt here. A graduate student who had
studied with me and then had gone on to take a workshop
with
told me
she was
embarrassed
and perplexed
another professor,
and could I help her out. I said sure, I could
about something,
session
the professor
had
try. She said that in her first workshop
follow
admonished
them that they had to write from their passions,
I knew where
the professor was coming from; I've
their obsessions.
formulae,
using go-get-'em
plenty of such pep talks myself
to
out
I
fill
had
the
first
hour
before
when
sending them
especially
the syllabus; but I also sympathized
with
the student,
home with
woman
an
a smart, talented
and
excellent
personal
essayist, when
given
she confessed
about
guilty
be shallow.
that she didn't
not being
think she had any obsessions.
She felt
it
and
feared
she
indicated
obsessed,
might
was a much
con
I thought
overrated
that obsession
or
was
rarer
in
in
movies.
First
it
real
than
of
life
novels
all,
cept.
an independent
much
filmmaker without
of an idea starts
When
I told her
to walk around the moody
shooting a film, he gets a pretty woman
he knows he's got to have
rain-slicked
streets, and then?because
to follow her. In arty films,
a plot?he
gets his hero or anti-hero
8
to pull together ran
is the last refuge of plot desperation
so
not
to
In
it's
You say to
real life,
be obsessed.
easy
footage.
I think I'll stalk that person who's been on my mind, and
yourself,
obsession
dom
then you say, Nah, I have to finish my work, or, No, that's silly, she's
not going to like me any better because
I'm following her around.
The practical mind kicks in. There have been times inmy life when I
actually tried to promote an obsession with someone
seem like a solution
to feeling
it would
just because
or
and in the middle of obsessing,
trying to, Iwould
or something,
at loose ends,
start to giggle,
as much
as to say: Who
am I kidding?
not
too much
I'm
the
obsessive
type, and generalizing
Maybe
just
to believe
from narrow experience;
but I continue
that obsession
is more
of a romantic
construct
second
with
obsession
than an everyday occurrence.
The
to
is
I
that
it
tends
nowhere.
go
problem
have met obsessive
types on the road through life, and for the most
were
tend to repeat themselves,
part they
pretty boring. Obsessives
ignoring other people or other stories breaking around them;
a
so I'm not sure how
it's
very narcissistic
pattern of intellection,
it is in the production
I'm
useful
of essays and other nonfiction.
a
to
we
obsession
is
fiction
don't
it.
need
say
concept,
tempted
while
then what do
Okay, fine, we don't have to start from obsession;
we need to generate nonfiction?
I would
It sounds
say, curiosity.
more
a
more
it's
in the
than
lot
but
obsession,
tepid
dependable
a
soon
run.
out
You
strand
of
and
follow
pretty
long
curiosity
you've
a whole
a
got an interesting
digression,
chapter, a book proposal,
to entrapment
in the hothouse
book. The solution
of self is not to
as though we had to buy into
autobiographical
writing,
relinquish
are self-absorbed
the anti-memoir
backlash that says memoirs
navel
is to expand the self by get
gazing. That's bullshit. No, the solution
more
to
in
it
interface
with
and more parts of history
ting
curiosity
In practical terms, this is the second-book
and the concrete world.
for the successful memoirist.
If the first book you wrote
problem
was very successful,
one memoir
I suppose you can keep publishing
after another,
like 'Tis after Angela's Ashes or Cherry after The Liars'
Club; but eventually, you're going to have to mine new material.
In any event, this was the solution
I came to after having writ
ten three collections
two volumes
of personal
of personal
essays,
an
I
novel.
could keep cannibalizing
poetry and
autobiographical
or I could
what hunks of my body and past were
still unwritten,
9
that is to say, project my con
go out into the world and meditate,
a book about the New York water
onto it. So Iwrote
sciousness
I could about the history, marine
front. I read everything
biology,
to the waterfront.
I
urban planning,
literature and politics pertinent
wrote about dock construction
and shipworms
and corrupt unions
and Robert Moses
and Joseph Mitchell
and pirates and sailors and
I also wrote
and
and
about my
public housing,
people
I found that
odd experiences walking
the waterfront,
because
homeless
own
to jettison my I-character on this journey. If any
necessary
I
inmy personal essays was essential
the
voice
had
thing,
developed
to which my
the clumsy, disparate materials
for welding
together
itwasn't
curiosity
obdurate
had
led me.
matter
The path of my
the unifying
became
I have a confession
to make:
Iwas
consciousness
through
all this
element.
never obsessed
with
the water
a pretext, a structure for me to follow out my curi
a
I don't pretend to have hit
in
few
dozen
different directions.
osity
on anything original by using this method.
The formula of curios
front.
It offered
ity-driven research plus personal voice is one of the most prevalent
from Rebecca Solnit to Philip
modes we see in today's nonfiction,
to Jonathan Raban to many of the people at this confer
Gourevitch
to nature writing
to family chronicles
to
ence, from travel writing
that descend
from Orwell's
of political engagement
The Road
toWigan Pier.
Not obsession
but curiosity. I have the underlying
conviction
that
nonfiction
tends toward reason, calm, intelligence,
insight, order.
a bad thing, but we sometimes
This is not necessarily
feel guilty
works
and want to heat up the form, make
it, we nonfiction writers,
to
it more
irrational. Much modernist
fiction, from Dostoevsky
Faulkner, has staked out the territory of the irrational, the deranged,
about
or otherwise
narrator.
But nonfiction
reason-impaired
since at least Rousseau
has traditionally
readers to
encouraged
as
the
whatever
else
his
and
narrator,
flaws,
reliable,
regard
making
a sincere attempt to level with us. It's the difference between Lolita
retarded
a moral monster
and Speak, Memory?between
(as Nabokov
his wife Vera insisted the charming Humbert
Humbert was)
narrator.
reminiscent
dependably
and
vs. a
I am intrigued in this regard by two memoirs
I have read recently:
Memoirs of My Nervous Illness by Daniel Paul Schreber, a nineteenth
and was locked
century jurist who suffered from paranoid delusions
10
up in an insane asylum, and The Future Lasts Forever, by the French
Louis Althusser,
in a
Marxist
who
philosopher
strangled his wife
moment
of delirium. What moves me about these memoirs
is that
about
trying to write as rationally as possible
were
not
at
all
their brushes with madness.
for
liter
writing
They
a
nor
to
flirt
in
of
with
the
senses,"
ary glory
poetic "derangement
as
were
to
itwere,
the Baudelaire-Rimbaud
manner, but
compelled,
or
their
whatever
shards
still
existed,
keep
sanity,
by trying to relate
both
were
authors
of losing their minds. We tend to forget that
experience
a
can
be
Reason
So let us
rare, prized, hard-to-regain
commodity.
not disdain
to make
of the nonfiction
writer
the classic mandate
the horrible
sense of the world,
We always come
to tell about
it in lucid, rational
to that strange prohibition,
of the Clinton
administration's
back
tell." It reminds me
terms.
"Show, don't
order on gays
in the military:
"Don't ask, don't tell." Why
this repression
of the
someone
voice
called
who
could
you
telling
today? Traditionally,
a
of
deliver a narrative from a particularly
view,
sharp, juicy point
more
a
to
is
natural
for
than
writer
tell?to
"story-te/Zer." Nothing
use summary,
subject,
legitimate
and analysis when putting across a particular
I understand,
I think, some of the
in nonfiction.
of telling which my students voice in a creative
context
particularly
mistrust
even one in nonfiction:
writing workshop,
they object to some kind
of assertion or run of assertions
that isn't backed up with specifics.
want
to
don't
do
writer
the
the work for them. They would
They
prefer to come
and suggestions.
to their own
conclusions
based
on
indirect
hints
see anything wrong with the writer
Myself,
sharing conclusions
directly with the reader; where does it say that
is the one and only valid literary method?
But
Jamesian indirection
if you're going to tell us directly what's
I do think
in your mind,
I don't
you as the writer
to make the "telling" passages
have an obligation
particularly vivid, so that the drama of a voice telling us all it can,
with complete
reader's fears of
candor, can allay the contemporary
us
to
Let
tell.
show
and
agree
pallid summarizing.
There
be
the fear of endless yammering.
(I assure you, I'll
once it
in a few minutes.)
How does consciousness,
to stop? "I think therefore
I am" becomes
know when
remains
through
gets going,
"As long as I'm thinking,
I'm still alive"?a
for
the
who
finds himself
person
especially
Poe understood
that Gothic
dimension
way
to cheat
death,
buried.
prematurely
of consciousness.
There
are
11
in a good sense with endless conscious
associated
as
ness, such
Proust, whose
Whitman,
urge to keep
Montaigne,
text could
and
their
single ever-expanding
qualifying
cataloguing
never cease until death put a stop to it.
certain
authors
of my students' most
and I am never
frequent questions,
sure how to answer it, is: How do you know when
to end an essay?
answer
is:
We know that
When
hand
tired.
the
your
gets
Perhaps
One
as a technical matter,
an essay must
conclude
because
the reader
a
cannot take any more?not
because
conclusion
has
necessarily
In fact,
been reached in the author's mind, or staged as inevitable.
in essays for as long as possible.
is to be avoided
The
inevitability
to new
form must be kept open, the lines of inquiry left receptive
curiosities.
is also brought up in relation to non
to the pursuit of
has some relationship
fiction. I suppose nonfiction
is one of the last remaining dignities
that can reasonably
truth?it
Sometimes
be deduced
the word
from
"truth"
its negative
name?but
as soon as I begin to write
and I think I'm about to bluff
the word "truth" my palms get sweaty
or perjure myself.
"What is truth?" said Pontius
wrote
wonderful
essays in his spare time.
ably
more
to talk about another
I would
be
willing
Pilate, who
prob
word,
"honesty."
We may not ever be in possession
of the truth, but at least as non
fiction writers we can try to be as honest as our courage permits.
to the world of facts outside ourselves,
in reporting
Honest
honest
about our own
actually felt and did, and finally, honest
I realize that a completely made-up
fiction can achieve
confusions.
its own artistic "honesty," but that is a separate issue and a rather
what
we
use of the word. The challenge
faced by the nonfiction
speculative
to oneself or to
writer
is to take something
that actually happened,
as
as possible.
to
it
render
and
and
others,
try
honestly
compellingly
I realize that in giving it shape, the nonfiction writer may be obliged
to leave out many facts, combine
incidents or rearrange chronolo
am
a
not
I
Fine:
stickler
about
and do not think
these matters,
gies.
we need apply the strictest journalistic
standards of factual accuracy
to all literary nonfiction.
time wor
The press spends far too much
rying
such as was Vivian Gornick
questions,
a
in
it
memoir,
"composite
figures"
probably because
an
to generate
air of scandal and controversy
by pouncing
these
to use
right
is easier
12
bogus
ethical
on discrepancies
the written
between
fathom the art of the memoir.
My
sible
facts
and lived record
than
it is to
own
and whenever
pos
feeling is that, all things considered,
not
I
would
rather
(it's
always possible),
employ the actual
in a nonfiction
there is something magical
and
piece, because
that is given to us, in the very random
uncanny about the world
ness or order that it is given to us. As soon as we change a person's
or a place-name
to architect,
from
from, say, writer
profession
to San Jose, or the age that one lost one's virginity from
some tension goes out of the piece. It's the
to
nineteen,
twenty-one
to
tension of trying
the thing that happened,
the
render precisely
a
to
draw
model
way Albrecht D?rer would
try
by looking through
Indianapolis
a gridded
scrim and transferring
the thing in front of him, square
by square, onto his paper with charcoal. No doubt there are equally
two
I've written
that the fiction writer follows.
tensions
significant
novels
and a bunch
because
so I know. But perhaps
fiction myself,
moment
on a
I'm working
fiction (at the
of other
I do keep writing
I see no reason
to try to make my nonfiction
read like fic
novella),
tion. I can appreciate
that the attributes of nonfiction
their
possess
own charm and validity, and I'm not so drawn to hybridizing
the
forms. But many are.
to a doctor's
and I
day I was rushing
appointment
someone
to
a
Post
who had the New York
open
big tabloid
passed
"Nonfiction
Reads Like Novel," with a picture of gossip
headline,
I thought,
Liz Smith grinning beneath
it. Holy moly,
columnist
The
other
I started to feel persecuted,
everyone's
getting into the act! Imean,
turns
out Liz was plugging
It
there were
her
signs everywhere.
new book, The City of Falling People, and I
friend John Berendt's
"This
of
the
tale
fetid, mythic,
quote:
schizophrenic,
glamorous,
on
its evasive
the
Adriatic
with
Sea?along
city
slowly sinking
for a hypnotic
read. Berendt
is the best at what
and what he does is persuade
the reader to close his book
denizens?makes
he does,
and say,
'What a fabulous
you realize with a start,
fashioned
like exquisite Venetian
glass." Now,
I would have thought that facts fashioned
like exquisite Venetian
at least as much
the province of nonfic
glass would be considered
novel!'
Then
it's all true?facts
tion as fiction. Look at Edward Gibbon's
historic
details
one ever accused
of
magisterial
synthesizing
and Fall of the Roman Empire, which no
of sounding
like a novel, though it is a wonderful
in The Decline
13
in Liz Smith's
distinction
excitable
key genre-merging
seems
not
to
is
about
facts
like
it
me, but
glass,
description
being
this one: "makes for a hypnotic
read." It is only when you the reader
story. The
are put under a hypnotic
spell that you can be said to enter Active
in another's word-pictures,
that
space. That will-less
absorption
to another's
seems to me
of your mind
abandonment
command,
not all fiction functions
the siren-song
of fiction. Obviously,
this
or
demands
such surrender, but the "hypnotic" state, I believe,
way,
the
ideal
condition when people speak about nonfiction
represents
In the same manner, many fledgling memoir
reading like fiction.
into a hypnotic present tense, because
ists today lock themselves
it
allows them the fantasy that they are re-experiencing
the past as a
sort of numbed
rogating
victim moving
their own complicity
and the perspective
hindsight
I confess
that I am more
graphical
to accept
through a dream, rather than inter
in the proceedings
with the benefit of
of hard-won
and more
wisdom.
to reading autobio
I
it is
because
the older
nonfiction,
get the more difficult
of fiction. I have a friend who is a novelist
the contrivance
drawn
essays on the side, not seriously,
keeps writing
personal
a
I read her novels,
like
from fiction. Often, when
holiday
are always ambitious,
I get the feeling that the characters and
and who
more
which
are contrived,
and the plot mechanically
forced towards
or
a
I
farce.
Then
essay by her and it's a
pick up
personal
tragedy
a warmly
intel
relaxed, with
gem: completely
convincing,
witty,
that she didn't have
ligent narrative voice. The reason is probably
situations
a piece of lived experi
just sculpt into words
an easy thing to do, but since she is already a trained
it. Sometimes
literary artist, she knows how to go about doing
can
too
too
be
and
would
benefit
from a
facile,
imagination
cheap,
to invent,
ence?not
she could
restraint put on it.
disciplined
Last year, I heard the great Philip Roth deliver a talk on his latest
struck me most was his saying
novel, The Plot Against America. What
"Don't invent,
that every night he would go to bed and tell himself:
Sure enough,
of that novel are
remember!"
the first two-thirds
the events seem,
everyday and plausible
in
last
it's
the
the
fact;
third, when
only
its
and
book
loses
and
that
the
magnificence
plot gets busy
wacky,
writers
We
be
nonfiction
shouldn't
mechanical.
becomes
overly
remarkable
how
close
because
of how
to remembered
so in awe of invention;
H
it's a fairly cheap
knack. We
also need
to
recognize that some of the best writers of the past fifty years, such
as Mary McCarthy,
Gore Vidal,
James Baldwin,
George Orwell,
were
Norman Mailer,
and Joan Didion,
arguably better at nonfic
tion than fiction. None of them ever created a character as vibrant
as his or her nonfiction
Aquarius,
narrator, be itMary,
or Joan. So nonfiction
has nothing
George, Jimmy, Gore,
to apologize
for. It can
hold its head up high.
I believe
for listening
I have
run out of thoughts
for the moment.
Thank
you
patiently.
15