tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6004423696675838467.post3499931451380785826..comments2024-03-14T02:24:22.876-07:00Comments on Essay Daily: Talk About the Essay: On Truth, “Essayistic Fiction,” and Canine Thumping: A Roundtable DiscussionUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6004423696675838467.post-17889028437467898212016-01-13T11:07:17.463-08:002016-01-13T11:07:17.463-08:00The issues raised here inspired my blog post on wh...The issues raised here inspired my blog post on what honesty means in nonfiction beyond being a mere label:<br /><br />http://richardgilbert.me/gornicks-fierce-attachments-traces-the-divide-between-novel-memoir/Richard Gilberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02295157685034187345noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6004423696675838467.post-78945155859054041922016-01-11T14:48:37.254-08:002016-01-11T14:48:37.254-08:00I've been thinking about this issue as I rerea...I've been thinking about this issue as I reread one of my all-time favorite memoirs, Fierce Attachments. It alternates beautifully between the writer's remembered childhood past and her more recent, adult past as she and her mother walk around New York. Vivian Gornick has said she invented one of the latter scenes with her mother. It has never bothered me too much because of the nature of memory and because her goal seemed to be to more fully and honestly portray her mother. <br /><br />What's different for me this time is that I'm reading Gornick after slogging through a traditional, chronological memoir and while trying to read a traditional plotted novel and finding it likewise heavy going. Gornick's writing, in contrast, at the sentence and structural level, excite me. But would I be loving it if it were fiction? If it had been written and sold as a novel? How much does my enjoyment owe to its labeling as nonfiction?<br /><br />Setting her admitted fiction aside, I have decided quite reluctantly that much of the appeal of Fierce Attachments is its nonfiction status. It probably wouldn't be exciting enough as a novel, except maybe as the most rarified literary fiction. But as a memoir depicting the forces and especially the mother that forged the writer, wow! Hewing as much as possible to nonfiction's promise to be nonfiction is important because that promise is an inherent and important part of nonfiction's appeal. Someone like you or me, though maybe a better writer, is working hard to understand and convey her life. Since we're pretty much all walking around doing that in our heads, it's compelling to read someone's shaped but real and real-time account of this task.<br /><br />This drives me into the DWM camp, as I understand it, even as I still give Gornick a pass on minor embroidery in a work of genius. Richard Gilberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02295157685034187345noreply@blogger.com