Post #5: Fiction vs. Nonfiction

As the title of this post notes, I believe in a strong difference between fiction and nonfiction. There are lines that may be crossed and crossed again within a book, as long as the reader knows.

When a book is marketed as a memoir, the book should be completely unfabricated events. The perspective of those events from the author may be included, but the actual events must be real. Like Laila Lalami said in her LARB One Minute Film, everyone experiences things differently and will retell them differently, but facts are facts, even in a memoir. The commentary on those facts may be different depending on the person, but the events can not change.

If the line is in any way blurred, I agree with Seth Greenland (in his LARB One Minute Film) and his theory of apocalypse. This sparked a thought of the book 1984 by George Orwell.  In this 1950's dystopian novel, Orwell predicts the future (1984) based on the state of the world he was living in. Government would be supreme, producing "novels" with no real plot line, writing the newspapers and textbooks, in charge of everything, and those who didn't work for the government were looked down upon. "Big Brother" was always right, and if they weren't they would make sure everyone thought they were by changing history they once wrote (in textbooks, etc.) and making it match the world around them. Nobody knew what was real and what was fake, and many people didn't seem to mind.

The world of 1984 is not one I would like to live in. While it does take an extreme stance on government, it also shows that if fiction and nonfiction blend, it will cause more questions, more lying, and more confusion than in necessary in the world. I would rather read something knowing it was a piece of fiction than be inspired by a "true story" that never really happened.

Paul Mandelbaum discusses how to include the fictional pieces of memoirs by owning up to the fact that they are not fact, and I could get behind this as long as it is clearly stated where the fiction begins. There is no problem filling in details or spicing up a story with some over exaggerated events, but I want to know what I'm reading.