The difference between fact & fiction

So Fred calls and tells me his next book is featuring Jack Pilgrim, my character from Leopards Kill.
"You can't do that," I tell him.
"Why not?"
"For one thing, he's not your character."
"So?"
"And for another thing, you write non-fiction."
There's a pause in the conversation. Then he says, "Wanna talk about the Mets?"

A bullshit tour de force . . .

Speaking of mixing fiction with fantasy . . .

(Margaret B. Jones was really Margaret Seltzer. Everything she says in this interview is completely made up, as was her “memoir.”)

Reason 2 to write fiction: Entertainment

A second reason, among the many, to write fiction has to do with entertainment.

I’m old school maybe, but my concept of fiction is that its primary purpose is to entertain. That entertainment can happen on many different levels and in many different ways – Proust and Zane Gray both have entertainment value, though usually not for the same person.

Entertainment should not be the primary purpose of nonfiction. That may be even quaint notion these days, and it may certainly seem odd coming from someone who writes narrative nonfiction (which Rangers at Dieppe was), since by definition narrative nonfiction employs the strategies of fiction. But it goes back to my belief that nonfiction has to hew to the truth of the specific reality it deals with. If entertainment becomes more important than that reality, then it ceases to be nonfiction.

Leopards Kill was a pretty dark book through a lot of stretches, but I hope the story was entertaining to read throughout. If it had been nonfiction, I think readers would have come away with a very different experience, probably not one as hopeful, and I know not as clear cut.

(To be continued . . .)

Root causes

You: What's that mean?
Me: Which?
Y: Fiction is stranger than truth.
M: It means what it means.
Y: I thought truth was stranger than fiction.
M: That's exactly your problem.