Richard Rhodes, in his How To Write: Advice and Reflections, gives a new (and better?) name to nonfiction: Verity. And this is what he has to say about the difference between fiction and verity...
"Considered as a craft, technically, the writing of fiction and the writing of verity are identical processes but for one significant difference: we expect information conveyed in verity to conform to verifiable external references, while the information conveyed in fiction need be only internally consistent...
"But there's a deeper sense than the technical in which the two kinds of writing, fiction and verity, are closer than we like to acknowledge: facts are always only provisional, subject to further verification and revision. Facts are constructed, in verity as in other forms of discourse, and their authority is based on conventions to which a greater or lesser number of people voluntarily agree. Readers assess works of verity by rules of credibility and internal consistency similar to implicit rules they use to assess works of fiction; in the case of works of verity, however, they expect confirmation from external references as well."
So, what happens if we take these expectations for the difference between fiction and verity and we deliberately thwart them? As, for example, Nabokov does in Ada: Or Ardor, where the internal consistency of the fiction is purposefully subverted in order to show the unconscious at work (c.f. William Boyd in Nabokov's Ada). Same goes for Aleksandar Hemon's The Lazarus Project and W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn, where fictional photographs are used as external documentation, although they aren't "external" at all.
Rhodes also has this to say about writing:
"Imagination is compassionate. Writing is a form of making, and making humanizes the world."
More on empathy and fiction, coming soon...
Susan Taylor Chehak
PublicationsFiction
"It's Not About the Dog"
available online at www.guernicamag.com "Apocalypse Tonight"
in "L.A. Under the Influence," edited by Rob Roberge. 20 L.A. Writers, their influences and their work. THE TRUTH ABOUT ANNIE D. (formerly "The Story of Annie D.")
"Chehak's prose provides a seamless, calm flow to a novel whose elements of love and murder ripple enticingly, fully surfacing only gently, only eventually, in the most satisfying kind of storytelling." -- Booklist HARMONY
"Haunting . . . Clodine Wheeler is the bemused narrator who strings together brilliant beads of descriptive phrases as she sorts through her memories . . . Chehak skillfully depicts small-town meanness and ironic generosity . . . . Her mesmerizing tale has classic resonances." – Publishers Weekly DANCING ON GLASS
"A dark tale of obsession among the posh ranks of a midwestern town... Chehak's poetic style exposes the passionate longings beneath the mannered sterling-and-crystal patina of Cedar Hill life; she renders both violence and love with an unflinching eye and casts a mournful spell." -- Vogue SMITHEREENS
"Chehak is a very accomplished storyteller, always in control of her narrative, which moves ahead with grace and speed. But it's not only the plot that matters to this writer. It's the telling little details, particularly of teenage angst and of domestic life that makes the novel rich... SMITHEREENS is a novel fully worthy of the title thriller. It's hard to put down. It has a kind of dark allure." - The Los Angeles Times RAMPAGE
“In Susan Taylor Chehak’s skilled hands, Iowa becomes the seething, steamy setting for a tale of pure evil… This is a marvelous, creepy story.” -- The Kansas City Star Nonfiction
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how fiction saved the world |
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