Truth, Fiction, Whatever

The recurring scenario:
"So, you have a year left in college?"
"Yup."
"Do you know what you're majoring in yet?"
"Yes, I am an English major."
"Oh, so you're going to teach?"
"No."
"Well, what are you going to do then?"
"I want to be a writer."
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
silence
"You're serious?"
"Yes."
"Ok, then what are you going to write? Novels? Movie scripts?"
"Well, what I'm most interested in is Creative Nonfiction--"
"Oh so you mean lies? You're going to write lies?"
"No..."
"Well, then how is it creative if it's true?"

And such is the strife I endure whenever I try to explain to anyone what it is exactly that I believe Creative Nonfiction to be. I guess I have to be honest and admit that it is kind of a bullshit genre, consisting loosely of memoirs, travel essays, interviews, and feature pieces (which are usually analogized as glorified magazine articles), but it is still, arguably, the fastest growing and most publishable genre, as well as the most varied.

When I say "varied," what I really mean is that most of it is pure crap, but lots of it is really, really interesting. Some notable writers of Creative Nonfiction are David Sedaris, Annie Dillard, Paul Theraux, Bruce Chatwin, and Bill Bryson. Their published books cover topics such as home, childhood, travel and writing, and are all really good.

What sets Creative Nonfiction apart from Fiction is that, while it too is stylistically polished and actually enjoyable to read, it documents in truth actual events that actually happened to actual real people. Some may say that this is too confining of a limitation to give to Creative Nonfiction, but they are just lazy. Creative Nonfiction is such because it relies on fact, the author's interpretation of the facts, and the reader's interpretation of both the facts and they author's personal bias. Even though some leniency should be provided to the writer for their interpretation, there is a big difference between personal interpretation of real events and people, and total fabrication of events and people. "Art is a lie that tells the truth" because art, in itself, is not substantial, not because it deceives. In Creative Nonfiction, the art or artifice--the lie that tells the truth--is the committing of actual things to paper. The same goes for Fiction: meaning lies not in the fictional nature of the characters; meaning is in what they do and think and say and react.

I think that it is important to understand, then, that in all prose, fiction or non, it doesn't matter, when trying to find truth and meaning, whether the things that happened are real or not. So then why does it matter that Nonfiction be true, if truth is not reliant on factisimilitude? The reason why is matters, and the reason why I am so drawn to Creative Nonfiction, is that there is so much to learn from real people and their actual experiences. It is the artistic rendering of history and when it's done really well, it can pack a double punch, teaching in the way that fiction does as well as the way that a text book does. And yes, art should teach. Not necessarily teach lessons, but it should teach about the world and about the self in a way that causes everyone to look at things differently and more clearly. Otherwise, what's the point? Even abstract expressionism (and I don't mean that to say that it is a lesser art form, only that it is purely form, and therefore less likely to teach a lesson in the traditional sense than any other kind of art) evokes emotion that causes it's viewer to reevaluate they way he or she looks at life.

So, back to why Creative Nonfiction should be factual. All human experience is formative, and real (that is to say, factual) human experience is, in my experience, the most formative. Creative Nonfiction has become an important part of literary culture in it's ability to teach and inform without being didactic and tiresome (even though most of it is bad and therefore didactic and tiresome). Within my own ethical constructs, I believe that you should not teach by saying that things are true unless they really are. Call me old fashioned, but I think that telling the truth is very important. Part of the meaning that lies in all Creative Nonfiction is the fact that it is true, and I don't know why this is. On the one hand, it doesn't matter at all--the story could be totally made up and yet the meaning would remain--but at the same time, it is the entire meaning--that this real thing happened to this real person, "It could happen to you!" and this is how it really affected them.

I guess that this then begs the question of whether or not Creative Nonfiction is art or not, to which I would say that I don't have a clue, and I am haunted by the distinct possibility of my beloved literary genre being nothing more than glorified journalism. Could I be more self-contradictory, you ask? Probably, but it might be difficult. But I am not going for water-tight here, I am going for deeper understanding. So please, please shove your fists through the holes in my theory. What I am hoping is that by being shown how wrong I am about Creative Nonfiction, I will be able to figure out what it is and therefore be able to write it better. (First I may need to learn grammar, but no matter.)