Blog Post #5

Blog Post #5

 

In order for me to consider a book non-fiction it must be considered 100% accurate based on the facts known at that time by the author. I say this because the point of non-fiction is to provide accurate information without any input that didn’t occur (fiction).

I consider half-truths in novels okay, as they are presenting a good fictional story. However Frey and Mortenson’s stories, however popular, should never be considered nonfiction or memoirs. If containing fiction, by definition of genre, that book should not be labeled as nonfiction. I realize that when writing a memoir it is hard to remember every detail, but adding things that never occurred purely to make the novel more interesting goes against the whole idea of writing a memoir. A memoir is a person’s account of certain events that really occurred to them, and transpired around them.

In response to David Shield’s opinion of genre’s not being necessary I find that I disagree. We need lines between genres including between fiction and nonfiction. In real life there is a sharp line between reality and what is “fiction.” When looking for answers or compiling information on real events, you don’t want embellishments in a non-fiction book, you want facts and accounts that are as accurate as possible. You don’t want to sift through heaps of fictional speculation, you want the truth. We need these lines to classify all the works of literature.  Our society is based on organization, literature should be no different. There are guidelines for which pieces of literature fall into which genres, and as the system sees more and more books be classified into genres, the gray area is getting quite small thankfully.