Fiction or Non-Fiction?

[Marie1]

Ahhh.... right TCO and SR...

 

[JWolf]

I dunno, I hear they read them and then talk about them together though. Even sadder really.

The saddest part of all are the ones who actually write the books. They spend time dreaming of Star Trek.

Yeah, they're all sad, strange little people, aren't they?

Oh, wait.....

But then, we could say that the customers are the saddest of all since they actually pay for what the authors dream of. What a sad world we live in.

 

[TerriO]

The saddest part of all are the ones who actually write the books. They spend time dreaming of Star Trek.

Yeah, they're all sad, strange little people, aren't they?

Oh, wait.....

But then, we could say that the customers are the saddest of all since they actually pay for what the authors dream of. What a sad world we live in.

We could extend the cycle of sad out to combine both the authors and the readers, who actually pay insane levels of attention to what the TV and movie writers dream up. We're all just as sad as each other.

I mean, really, we're all slaves to whatever they do in the end.

 

[Cicero]

It's fiction "based on a true story." The dictionary definition of fiction, in this sense, is that it's narrative storytelling derived from the imagination and not necessarily based on fact. That means it doesn't have to be completely detached from fact. If you take a factual situation and use your imagination to turn it into a dramatized account and fill in the gaps between the facts, that's still fiction. I think it's a bit of a stretch to call it "historical fiction" if it's about something within recent memory.

What about a book like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (a terrible book, I should add, lest I seem to be endorsing it), which is billed as - and, indeed, appears to be - a nonfiction novel? The closest elements to fiction in the novel are reconstructions the author has made of events in his own life which he remembers in less than stenographic detail.

 

[KRAD]

^ I've always thought of that book as a classic case of a book that could never live up to the coolness of it's title.

 

[DEWLine]

Both, dagnabbit.

 

[DEWLine]

"Non-Fraction"? What the heck is that?

Stuff that wasn't written by Matt Fraction.

 

[Christopher]

^^I thought it meant an integer.

 

[Mistral]

"Non-Fraction"? What the heck is that?

Stuff that wasn't written by Matt Fraction.

I thought he was an artist. What do I know? See what comes of only reading books without pictures?