The trouble with nonfiction is that you're claiming it's truth, and any slanting or glossing over or selectivity undercuts you. With fiction, anything at all true counts as truth.
February 11, 2025
"If I’m writing fiction and I get deep enough into it, all of a sudden it feels like I’m telling the truth. If I’m writing nonfiction, I write down something I absolutely believe, and it’ll look like a lie."
Said Anne Tyler, quoted in "At 83, Anne Tyler Has a New Novel. She’d Rather Talk About Anything Else. While many of her contemporaries are playing canasta, she’s releasing her 25th book. There’s no mystery to it, Tyler says: Start on Page 1, then keep writing" (NYT).
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14 comments:
Authors say that their fictional characters take on lives of their own and begin to act in ways that the authors didn't intend. In our cynical age, we don't necessarily believe that is true.
"New Journalism" was supposed back in the 60s and 70s to replace fiction. That really hasn't happened either. New Journalists, and journalists in general, pick out their little "status details" to manipulate their readers. Somebody's tacky clothing or furniture or food preferences are brought up to discredit them, and we don't get any closer to anything real or important.
Speaking of lies, are ANY of her friends playing “canasta”?
I used to love Anne Tyler books, but after a while, the plot always seemed the same. Someone in one of my book groups years ago complained that the way she wrote her characters was to take a bunch of index cards with character sketches on them then fling them onto her driveway and pick up a few randomly. Those were the characters that would end up in the book. If that's true, it must have worked for her because she has had good success.
She could get a job at the NYT. Or WaPo, although I hear they're not hiring right now.
I haven't read her books and don't know how good they are. I only know her from the film, The Accidental Tourist. It just seemed bland, ho-hum, and so what. Her late husband, an exile or emigre Iranian psychiatrist, also wrote novels. Maybe they should be looked into. He sounds more like the flavor in favor in today's literary world.
"Authors say that their fictional characters take on lives of their own and begin to act in ways that the authors didn't intend. In our cynical age, we don't necessarily believe that is true."
I entirely believe it.
Gosh, I used to love Anne Tyler. She might almost get me to read a novel again.
My letters to Penthouse Forum fell somewhere in between fiction and non-fiction.
Back in the 80s, Anne Tyler was such a big deal. I used to feel that I ought to read her books. I read "Accidental Tourist." But I don't read things like that anymore. I still read some fiction, but nothing like that.
In an ideological age, we understand that writers are constrained by their backgrounds. Where ideology and class prejudices aren't concerned, a character may act in ways that authors didn't expect, but that's a lot less common when politics enters the picture. Plus, a lot of writers aren't as sophisticated as they think. Sometimes in mysteries a character turns out unexpectedly to be the culprit, but is it the character who compels that change or the necessities of the plot?
"Authors say that their fictional characters take on lives of their own and begin to act in ways that the authors didn't intend..."
Same with software. Just substitute "algorithm" for "character." The difference is that with fiction, you can just go with it, in software, that's called the Texas sharpshooter ruse.
Personal belief is not truth. Objectivity is required to find truth, removing ego from the search for "lack of falsehood" or "conformity with all known information on the subject. If my "truth" differs from yours, either both are biased beliefs, or one of them is, or we are missing some info in our path to finding our truths.
It’s usually what’s not said that is the truth
"But I don't read things like that anymore. I still read some fiction, but nothing like that." Uncharacteristically vague. Things like what? Literary fiction?
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