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Keeping the Authors Voice in Nonfiction
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From: Aptimber at aol.com <Aptimber>
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2002 10:06:56 EST
Hi everyone Yes, one of the things I wonder is what's been posted below by Patty Pfitsch, and it follows with Nancy Ferestens post -- I think "creative nonfiction" is a more truthful description of the process of writing history, biography, nonfiction of any sort, than simply calling it "nonfiction." This is partly because it leaves more room for the author's voice in the telling.
The expectation that nonfiction is accurate and true in the strictest sense may be a modern expectation. If we were to look at the way some old fashioned (19c) historians and newspaper reporters told their tales, we'd all wonder about their sources. Those documents are filled with colorful details
-- how purple someone turned giving their testimony in court, or what so-and-sos last words were before shot to death on the wild prairies, and when they died they looked to the east because that's where their last love lived, etc. It's possible that kids in the 19c understood about the subjectivity of nonfiction because of such details. They may have wondered how someone knew so much, or told their parents a story from such a book and had their parents scoff. That said something. Anyway, what some of these earlier writers did was write "creative nonfiction."
One of the current challenges of nonfiction today is how to make the subjectivity of nonfiction understandable to kids (and to adults). Whenever something is written, it comes through a person with values and systems for ordering the importance of events, etc. This person makes crucial decisions about what gets put in the story. (Just the sheer number of dissertations in history on certain events is proof enough that events can be re-thought numerous times.)
And that's where I get excited about the term "creative nonfiction" because the authors voice can be re-instated in the telling (or maybe I should have said, kept in the in the telling). This can be done numerous ways, but here's a couple off the top of my head. It can be done through questions -- I think of a HISTORY OF US by Joy Hakim, a pretty straight history series, but filled with questions -- I love that about this series. Or it can be the author musing in the text about what might have happened because her sources are not giving her any more information. My favorite example of this is Natalie Zemon Davis, THE RETURN OF MARTIN GUERRE, where her 16c court document did not provide enough information for her to tell the story completely. And then there is nonfiction mixed with personal memoir, like Christopher Cokinos, HOPE IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS: A PERSONAL CHRONICLE OF VANISHED BIRDS, where Cokinos mixes his own personal stories -- of moving to a new part of the United States, describing how it feels to pick up one of the preserved Passenger Pigeons -- with meticulous research into the stories of bird species that have gone extinct. I love this kind of stuff! And in a way, I feel it to be more "true" than books that don't give me a sense of the writer.
Okay, enough! Thanks for reading this far. The posts I responded to are attached below.
Amy Timberlake
I'm replying to the following posts:
Date: Tue, 02 Apr 2002 15:51:30 00 Subject: Re: [CCBC-Net] Creative nonfiction From: Patricia Curtis Pfitsch
And then there's the whole issue of objectivity vs. subjectivity. We tend to assume that fiction is subjective while nonfiction is objective, that it's possible to present 'the facts' without coming from some perspective or viewpoint. But no matter how hard a writer tries, it's impossible to be totally objective. Events, and the interpretation of those events, are always different depending on where the observer is standing.
In some ways, what we're calling 'creative nonfiction' could even be more honest than the other kind, because that label at least admits the fact that there's a writer behind the words who has a particular perspective.
Patty Pfitsch
From: "Nancy Feresten" Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2002 17:24:30 00 Subject: creative nonfiction
One of the aspects of this newly energized children's nonfiction that's so exciting is the opportunity for authors to reveal themselves, recognizing where they can't know the truth and sharing their efforts to get as close as possible with readers. Far too often, kids believe in the absolute and unwavering truth of what they read, and it's wonderful that authors can now show them how stories
(even (especially?) truths) change and evolve.
Received on Wed 03 Apr 2002 09:06:56 AM CST
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2002 10:06:56 EST
Hi everyone Yes, one of the things I wonder is what's been posted below by Patty Pfitsch, and it follows with Nancy Ferestens post -- I think "creative nonfiction" is a more truthful description of the process of writing history, biography, nonfiction of any sort, than simply calling it "nonfiction." This is partly because it leaves more room for the author's voice in the telling.
The expectation that nonfiction is accurate and true in the strictest sense may be a modern expectation. If we were to look at the way some old fashioned (19c) historians and newspaper reporters told their tales, we'd all wonder about their sources. Those documents are filled with colorful details
-- how purple someone turned giving their testimony in court, or what so-and-sos last words were before shot to death on the wild prairies, and when they died they looked to the east because that's where their last love lived, etc. It's possible that kids in the 19c understood about the subjectivity of nonfiction because of such details. They may have wondered how someone knew so much, or told their parents a story from such a book and had their parents scoff. That said something. Anyway, what some of these earlier writers did was write "creative nonfiction."
One of the current challenges of nonfiction today is how to make the subjectivity of nonfiction understandable to kids (and to adults). Whenever something is written, it comes through a person with values and systems for ordering the importance of events, etc. This person makes crucial decisions about what gets put in the story. (Just the sheer number of dissertations in history on certain events is proof enough that events can be re-thought numerous times.)
And that's where I get excited about the term "creative nonfiction" because the authors voice can be re-instated in the telling (or maybe I should have said, kept in the in the telling). This can be done numerous ways, but here's a couple off the top of my head. It can be done through questions -- I think of a HISTORY OF US by Joy Hakim, a pretty straight history series, but filled with questions -- I love that about this series. Or it can be the author musing in the text about what might have happened because her sources are not giving her any more information. My favorite example of this is Natalie Zemon Davis, THE RETURN OF MARTIN GUERRE, where her 16c court document did not provide enough information for her to tell the story completely. And then there is nonfiction mixed with personal memoir, like Christopher Cokinos, HOPE IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS: A PERSONAL CHRONICLE OF VANISHED BIRDS, where Cokinos mixes his own personal stories -- of moving to a new part of the United States, describing how it feels to pick up one of the preserved Passenger Pigeons -- with meticulous research into the stories of bird species that have gone extinct. I love this kind of stuff! And in a way, I feel it to be more "true" than books that don't give me a sense of the writer.
Okay, enough! Thanks for reading this far. The posts I responded to are attached below.
Amy Timberlake
I'm replying to the following posts:
Date: Tue, 02 Apr 2002 15:51:30 00 Subject: Re: [CCBC-Net] Creative nonfiction From: Patricia Curtis Pfitsch
And then there's the whole issue of objectivity vs. subjectivity. We tend to assume that fiction is subjective while nonfiction is objective, that it's possible to present 'the facts' without coming from some perspective or viewpoint. But no matter how hard a writer tries, it's impossible to be totally objective. Events, and the interpretation of those events, are always different depending on where the observer is standing.
In some ways, what we're calling 'creative nonfiction' could even be more honest than the other kind, because that label at least admits the fact that there's a writer behind the words who has a particular perspective.
Patty Pfitsch
From: "Nancy Feresten" Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2002 17:24:30 00 Subject: creative nonfiction
One of the aspects of this newly energized children's nonfiction that's so exciting is the opportunity for authors to reveal themselves, recognizing where they can't know the truth and sharing their efforts to get as close as possible with readers. Far too often, kids believe in the absolute and unwavering truth of what they read, and it's wonderful that authors can now show them how stories
(even (especially?) truths) change and evolve.
Received on Wed 03 Apr 2002 09:06:56 AM CST
