Fiction Versus Non-Fiction
This is a subject that I have addressed before. Any writer deals with it.
And: I am any writer. So I am dealing with it.
We escritores are leidors, tambien.
I have been reading Isabel Allende's 2008 memoir the last few days...
卡甯謝爾 (sorry, with a random piece of paper I was inspired to try to find my Chinese name, in Chinese) There it is, for future posterity. Ka Ing Sher.
She, Allende that is, is inspiring, as usual. Reading some of it aloud, I commented to my wife this Sunday morning that not all fiction has no truth, or does contain a lot of truth. And non-fiction can be likewise.
That is the the dilemma: non-fiction inevitably will contain parts of the story that cannot be true, or is not confirmed as such, while fiction has a lot of truth, usually.
Paul Theroux has done this with his dark epic, Motherland. Published 2015? And it is not that dark, really. Just real, or not that real, not as real as it could be, according to him. Real enough.
Barach Obama seems to use some artistic fictitious license in his Dreams of My Father, 1995.
--See his close girlfriend in New York and his best friend in high school-- Both somewhat fabricated. For effect?
He was/is a smart Harvard educated guy, but even he gets it messed up.
Fiction and non-fiction are difficult to keep 100 percent one or the other.
That is the the dilemma: non-fiction inevitably will contain parts of the story that cannot be true, or is not confirmed as such, while fiction has a lot of truth, usually.
Paul Theroux has done this with his dark epic, Motherland. Published 2015? And it is not that dark, really. Just real, or not that real, not as real as it could be, according to him. Real enough.
Barach Obama seems to use some artistic fictitious license in his Dreams of My Father, 1995.
--See his close girlfriend in New York and his best friend in high school-- Both somewhat fabricated. For effect?
He was/is a smart Harvard educated guy, but even he gets it messed up.
Fiction and non-fiction are difficult to keep 100 percent one or the other.
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