Fact/Truth/Creativity

A special shout-out to Lee Gutkind for his observation yesterday in the Los Angeles Review of Books that “it’s possible to write terrific nonfiction narrative and stay steadfast to both truth and fact. One can be creative and truthful simultaneously. It just takes a lot more work” (“Doing A D’Agata,” March 19, 2012). Yes, factual writing is the more challenging art form. It’s refreshing to see this point being made. Writing a fact piece is, in a way, like writing a sonnet: the rule of the form must be obeyed. And the rule that governs factual writing is that the facts can’t be messed with. Everything else – design, voice, perspective, syntax, choice of detail, etc. – is fair game. As the great New Yorker writer John McPhee said in his Paris Review interview: “With nonfiction, you’ve got your material, and what you’re trying to do is tell it as a story in a way that doesn’t violate fact, but at the same time is structured and presented in a way that makes it interesting to read” (The Paris Review, Spring, 2010).

Credit: The above artwork is by Henrik Kubel; it appears in The New York Times Sunday Book Review (February 26, 2012), as an illustration for Jennifer B. McDonald's "In the Details."

In Fact

This week, in The New York Times Sunday Book Review, Jennifer B. McDonald, reviewing The Lifespan of a Fact by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal (“In the Details,” February 26, 2012), calls D’Agata’s championing of belief over fact “hogwash.” I totally agree, although I would’ve responded more vehemently and said “bullshit.” I was pleased to see a number of New Yorker writers (John Updike, E. B. White, Katherine Boo, Elif Batuman, Philip Gourevitch, and John McPhee) among the examples McDonald provides in support of her position that “Superb literary artists have managed to do their work while remaining precise about details D’Agata would dismiss as frivolous.” According to McDonald, D’Agata argues that, “His duty is not to accuracy…. His duty is to Truth. And when an artist works in service of Truth, fidelity to fact is irrelevant.” But “truth” is such a weasel word. Consider, for example, James Wood’s concept of “fictional truth”: “Sebald so mixes established fact with unstable invention that the two categories copulate and produce a kind of truth which lies just beyond verification: that is, fictional truth” (“W. G. Sebald’s Uncertainty,” The Broken Estate, 1999). A journalist who toys with facts in the name of Truth is not a journalist; he’s a fictionist. David Remnick, in the preface to his 2006 essay collection The Devil Problem, writes: “In defense of these stories, the reader should know they are true. Or, better to say, factual.” I agree; it’s much better to say “factual.” McDonald’s piece powerfully refutes D’Agata’s outrageous propositions. I wouldn’t change a word of it, except the final line, which reads, “Stay true, young Jim. Stay true.” I would say, “Stay factual, young Jim. Stay factual.”

Credit: The above artwork is by Henrik Kubel; it appears in The New York Times Sunday Book Review (February 26, 2012), as an illustration for Jennifer B. McDonald's "In the Details."