When does a work of fiction become non-fiction (or vice versa)?

Cafe Society
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This may be more of a Great Debate, but I’ll start it out here since it’s literary. No doubt a Junior Mod Patrol member will state an opinion soon enough.

The James Frey scandals of the past week and the ongoing lawsuit of Augusten Burroughs by the family he based Running With Scissors on have posed an interesting topic for debate: how much embellishment can you have before it’s fiction? (It’s safe to say by this point that JT Leroy is flat out fiction, I believe.)

Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil is always filed under non-fiction, but its author admits that he’s changed a lot in the story. Among other things:

*The first scene, in which Berendt is a guest at Williams’s mansion, Mercer House, and witnesses an explosive confrontation between Wms. and his soon to be murdered boy-toy, never happened. Berendt had never even met Wms. at that time and included that scene strictly to introduce the characters and build suspense and atmosphere. Much of Williams’s dialogue in the scene did come from much later conversations with and anecdotes about the man and he incorporated them there.

*The character Joe Odom is implied to be romantically involved with Mandy, when in fact they were only friends. Also gone is Odom’s drug addiction and bisexuality and other decidedly less charming characteristics. (Odom died of AIDS before the book was released.)

Berendt also by his own admission greatly changed the chronology of events in the book and often condensed or combined characters.

However, the books principal events did take place, most of the characters in the book are (or were) real people that Berendt knew, etc…

It’s very common for authors to change the names of real characters and I don’t think anybody would say this makes a work fictional- it’s generally a courtesy to respect the privacy of non public figures. It’s also fairly common in memoirs to reconstruct dialogue- nobody (except, according to Truman Capote, Truman Capote) has perfect memory of all conversations, but they do remember what was discussed, how the person speaking talked, etc., and can go from there. However, in the case above, where the Williams conversation at the beginning never actually happened, is this too much to keep the “non fiction” label?

Alex Haley was successfully sued for plagiarism twice, but there are also many who say that some of his claims (that he met the Kinte clan griot in Africa, for example) are provably false. I’ve absolutely no doubt that Gore Vidal’s Palimpsest shows the author in a far more favorable light than the memoirs of other people he portrayed (among other things he claims that he never cost his family a dime after he was a teenager when the records show that he lived with his father and stepmother for much of his 20s and that his mother loaned him the money to buy his first house and he never repaid it). I think whatever the proper line is it’s safe to say that Frey crossed it running. However, I don’t think that most of these fellows made things up out of whole cloth exactly either.

With Burroughs, my guess is that he embellished quite a bit but, based on what is known fact about the family he lived with (e.g. the old doctor really did wear a Santa hat, lost his license for allowing his 13 year old daughter to have a sexual relationship with a [rich] middle aged mental patient, and had a documented history of bizarre behaviors [while it wasn’t in the book, the man was once arrested for stalking Bill Cosby]) I think the general basis of what he wrote is probably true and the family will have a very difficult time getting a verdict.

On the reverse end, Capote was socially destroyed when he wrote the published portions of Answered Prayers, a novel using fictional names, but everybody who knew the people Capote based his characters on recognized the alter egos at work. Grace Metalious became a total pariah when she wrote Peyton Place because the characters and plots were evidently very identifiable (and I think she may have been sued for invasion of privacy, though I don’t know that). Jackie Collins is strictly classified as a novelist but even I can recognize many of her characters. Is this totally a work of fiction, then?

What’s your take? When is embellishment and or dramatic license too much? How much can you substantively distort or change or fabricate before it becomes a novel with autobiographical elements rather than a work of non-fiction?

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I’d say that when the work in question is specifically “confessional,” and it elicits a huge amount of personal sympathy, then people will feel cheated and lied to. Especially when the motivation for writing it suddenly changes, with exposure, from brave self-examination to craven attention-whoring and macho posturing. Frey’s backlash is not merely because of the fiction/non-fiction disconnect. It’s because he used the “non-fiction” label as currency to buy people’s sympathy.

3

Okay, this one disappeared under the horizon quickly, so I’ll retool it and try it one more time. While I think Lissener’s answer is a very good one, I am curious as to what others say, especially since I have a “special interest” in the topic.

Following is a stream of consciousness writing- I have no idea where it’s going. This is totally a work of fiction that I’m making up as I go along, but read it as if you were reading something that is marketed as non-fiction memoir.

Here’s another way of playing: feel free to read this or to skip it and just reply to the above.

I have no idea where the following is going- this is totally a piece of fiction that I’m making up as I go along. After it, I have some questions.

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Now, regarding the above, suppose that Josephus Waldrup was a real person and included the above in his autobiography/memoir, claiming it was truth. Here are some questions:

I don’t think anybody (other than my sister, mother and other relatives) would claim the story above is false because JW said Big Meemaw bought Tide when in fact she bought Downy Fabric Softener, or because it was Krystals Hamburger coupons rather than Thighs & Fries, or even if it was a Family Dollar instead of a Dollar General. These details are basically filler to avoid it being generic and may be changed for a specific purpose or maybe because J.W. doesn’t remember what the real items or store was, but remembers the rest of the story and wants to insert something specific in interest of storytelling. I think it’s still safe to say it’s reasonably non-fiction.

Also, the fact that Cara Lou Sims is really Hattie Mae Holbrook wouldn’t invalidate it because non-fiction authors frequently change names to protect people’s privacy. And the fact that he’s probably reconstructed the dialogue wouldn’t bother me- nobody really thinks that he recalls 100% of all conversations he’s had.

Something I do frequently in my own “non-fiction” writing when I’m reconstructing dialogue is include expository bits that are true but probably didn’t occur in the real conversation. In a recent story on the history of my grandmother’s pyromaniacal family I have a conversation occurring after the night she burned 60 acres of our woods and almost set our house on fire (which really did happen) in which she discusses her family background and tells us “I don’t know what the big deal’s about, my daddy’s house used to burn down all the time when we were kids.” Now, my grandmother really did make that last comment, and she and her brothers really did burn their father’s house down several times over the course of twenty years, but I’m almost positive that the conversation didn’t happen the same night that she almost set our hair on fire, but it works better for the story.

Likewise, she probably told me the story of how her brother Jim set the house on fire by throwing a kerosene lamp at a cat who scratched him (a true story) at a different time that she told the story of how her brother Sam burned down the house by setting a cigarette in a saucer full of gasoline and then defended him by saying “That wasn’t unusual, lots of men smoked back then” (which again, is a story she actually told), and I’m positive I heard the story of how the house burned the last time “because that black woman stole my brother Johnny’s hatchet” from my father rather than from my grandmother. HOWEVER, in the story (called She Will Set Your Fields on Fire) I have use come home to discover our woods burning and our house in danger [which really happened], then after everybody other than my father works themself into heatstroke extinguishing the flames he invites his mother to come in and have dinner with us [which really happened, but another time we had to fight the flames Grandmother had started in our woods {she caused major fires at least once every other year}], and then I have a conversation in which Grandmother tells the stories of how often her father’s house used to burn down due to his kids. This last conversation never took place, which is to say I had conversations with her and with my parents in which all of the stories came out, but it was at different times over the years, and, as if I’m writing a play, I make it all happen over the course of one night.

So my question is- do I still have the right to call the book written with stories such as this “non-fiction”, so long as I have a “chronologies and dialogue have sometimes been reconstructed out of actual events” type disclaimer? Or have I, by straying from the exact order of what happened, ventured into fiction even though I am telling true stories about real people?
In the above story I think the following things would make it fiction (if it weren’t already):

1- If, of course, Big Meemaw never really existed, it’s fiction.
2- If Big Meemaw is a composite character, then… gray area. I would call it fiction but others might disagree.
3- If it wasn’t actually Josephus who took her to town the day those things happened, then even if they did happen and he claimed to be witness to them but actually wasn’t then it’s a really gray area- again, I would call it fiction, but others might disagree.
Sorry- I’m babbling, but I am curious as to what folks think, and largely its because of my own projects.

5

Since you’re going to include a disclaimer, I think it’s okay to call it non-fiction as long as you’re not (1) inventing characters or (2) making things up that never happened – major things, like giving birth to septuplets, or putting LSD in the town’s drinking water.

Fudging with the circumstances and timing of conversations and events that actually took place is to be expected.

Every memoir I’ve read, I’ve assumed that “chronologies and dialogue have sometimes been reconstructed out of actual events”. I don’t consider it cheating, or that it makes the book fiction.

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Compare “Midnight” to Schindler’s List, which gets filed under Fiction for many of the same reasons. Most of the events in Schindler’s List happened, but the characters are often composites and Keneally wanted the freedom to write a novel, not a history.

Personally, I have a lot more respect for the second approach.

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A work of fiction describes imagionary things, things that are not being reported as things that have actually have happened.

A work of non-fiction describes things that are reported as things that have actually have happened.

When a work is explicitly advertised and described as a work on non-fiction, and it later comes out as containing large swaths of imaginary, not-really-happened-at-all or as not-really-happened-as-described-in-the-book, then what you’ve got is a book that is is not a non-fiction book.

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Musings, mostly directed at Sampiro:

Once you’ve got a composite character in it it’s fiction, IMO (but not in some other people’s O, obviously).

The advantages of fiction are that you can write the truth and say, “It’s fiction!” If the characters are recognizable despite being renamed then they are likely public figures. You can extract a deeper truth than what exists if you merely stick to the facts.

So, the fire example? I would say that is fiction. But “this really happened” is a big hook and used all the time. Memoirs of a Geisha starts out with a translator’s note. Uncounted other examples start out in a similar way (“I found this manuscript in my grandma’s hope chest up in the attic…”)

I have read memoirs where most of the players were identified by their actual names but one or two were not and those were noted. (One example: You’ll Never Eat Lunch In This Town Again, by Julie Phillips. There are many other examples but I can’t think of them.) Of course it’s great fun to try to identify who ***** really is, particularly when other people who are identified were equally exposed as disagreeable (for instance in the work cited, Goldie Hawn doesn’t bathe all that frequently, Erica Jong resembles Miss Piggy, etc.).

I have read fiction where most of the players were easily correlatable to public figures–by Truman Capote, Dominick Dunne, Jackie Collins, Robert Penn Warren. Some of them (Dunne) were confessional, probably even cathartic.

But see, the thing here is that if it’s fiction, while it can expose a truth, it is supposed to be made up. Nonfiction is NOT supposed to be made up.

Here is where Frey went wrong. He wrote a work of fiction that was a heroic fantasy starring himself (very common) and wrote it very, very, very poorly (also common). When it (not surprisingly) didn’t sell, instead of going to work on the craft of it all he said, “But wait! It’s all true! Does that change anything?” and it did (not common at all). Except that it wasn’t all true, and was still very, very, very poorly written. This can be done a hell of a lot better (Carrie Fisher, Postcards from the Edge, fiction but unquestionably based on Fisher’s own rehab experiences).

Years ago I read a biography of Dorothy Parker in which the author very coyly alluded to an affair she had but did not name the man, but then said that this guy killed himself in a certain year at the Martha’s Vineyard airport. Ithought, “Gee, and they didn’t know his name?” But the next bio of DP that I read, right after that, very calmly named the guy, no problem. So why did one skip over the details and the other not? I’ve wondered. The books were published very close together.

I have to say, I write fiction and every person I encounter, including members of my own family, seems to think I have based my books on my life, despite the fact that the main character is better dressed, richer, cuter, and more educated than I am and in a completely different line of work. I wrote a hot, hot sex scene in one of my books and when my husband read it he got very huffy (“I hope this was before…you know.” It wasn’t before anything I made it up. It didn’t happen. Sheesh.) I’ve led a very boring life. Not only that but about ninety percent of all the people I met during the years I was growing up, if I rendered them exactly my editor would say, “Sorry, these are the worst stereotypical cardboard characters I have ever seen.” If I had colorful, entertaining characters as members of my family I would use them, but I’d still call it fiction. I just feel so much freer then.

Stephen Bogart wrote, as fiction, a mystery in which the detective was the son of two actors who had a famous on-screen and then real-life romance and titled it Play It Again. In which said detective was investigating the murder of his mother.

From a market viewpoint, a lot more people buy nonfiction than fiction and it’s easier to get a nonfiction book on The List (you know what list). But not everybody who buys nonfiction buys the same kind of nonfiction–those who buy biography don’t buy self-help, necessarily, and those who buy self-help don’t buy memoirs, necessarily. And some of these people also buy fiction.

I would say just write it, and decide later if it’s fiction or not. In fact you are better off to write it as if nobody is ever going to see it except you. In terms of writing style I must add that you are already light-years ahead of Frey. Let yourself go.

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Correction, that should be Julia Phillips not Julie…