What's the line between works of fiction and works of non-fiction?

Cafe Society
21

I did know about those differences. And in fact without those elements there’s no story in Kane at all, and the symbolism of Rosebud is built entirely into those things.

When Welles was really provoked about the Kane-Hearst issue, I hear he used to shout “if you can prove it’s a thinly veiled biography, I’ll go down on you!”

I guess the key is something else Freddy the Pig said (and I don’t mean to pick on him specifically: “many aspects of the underlying story are twisted out of recognition for dramatic convenience.” Real life usually doesn’t make for convenient drama.

Also, Inherit the Wind, just like The Crucible, was intended to be a metaphor for McCarthyism. It was not intended to be straightforward history, which explains some of the changes from real life to the stage.

22

I think he went as “the Corsican formerly known as Napoleon Bonaparte” and then during his self indulgent phase, ‘Cool Papa N’, and while in exile, “Bone Party”.

The tone of the work seems also to make a big difference in its truth value. Take the case of the two bestselling middle aged gay memoirists, Augusten Burroughs and David Sedaris.

Burroughs was accused of lying in Running With Scissors by the family of Dr. Rodolph Turcotte, the man fictionalized in his book as Dr. Finch. Looking at the undisputed facts of the case it seems that the real Dr. Turcotte/Finch was very much a nutcase- quack theories, lost his license, sued for malpractice by several patients- in documented events not even in the book he was arrested for stalking Bill Cosby and for trying to lead a march from Massachusetts through Canada for some purpose or other. One of the most damning recollections in the book is true and documented: he really did allow his adolescent daughter to have a live-in sexual relationship with a rich middle aged severely mentally ill patient, and he really did take the hefty trust fund the man set up for her and apply it to his IRS debt, and considering this it’s not at all unlikely that he’d have allowed his 13 year old ward Augusten (then Chris Robison) to have a sexual relationship with a 30-something patient.
I think the family was really more upset at

  • Invasion of privacy (even though he changed their names their identity was soon revealed, plus anyone in the area of the events would already have known who the nutty psychiatrist that dressed like Santa Claus and had all manner of personal scandals was
  • Betrayal of confidence: the daughter who was in the sexual relationship with the much older mental patient was understandably infuriated that Burroughs revealed something so painful and humiliating to the world at large

Also, Burroughs’ mother’s psychological problems and lesbian relationships are a matter of record (legal records of her commitments and arrests and she’s published poems on her lesbianism). I haven’t read his latest book (the one about his father) but supposedly it’s very surreal and has a lot of people saying “Oh c’mon!” (though from personal experience I can state that the most unbelievable and over-the-top family stories are very often the ones that you’re leaving things out of rather than embroidering, so who knows). And other things I’ve no doubt were liberally exaggerated and or embellished if not made up from whole cloth, especially in light of Burroughs’ initial claims that he’d copiously documented everything in his journals which were still in his possession, and then changing that to “oops, apparently I threw those journals away when I was in rehab”. (I’ve never met Burroughs obviously but several things in his writing make him come across as a completely self consumed prick.)

Anyway, the outcome of his lawsuit, which was settled out of court, is that the book had to beef up the disclaimer a bit. How much it hurt his reputation or sales I’m not sure, but it definitely haunts him; there’s a footnote in just about every article on him or interview with him about it.
On the other hand, when a New Republic critic, Alex Heard, tried to discredit David Sedaris a few years ago by demonstrating some demonstrable falsehoods and or exaggerations in some of his autobiographical stories, Sederis’s fans responded with an overwhelming “So?” They couldn’t really care less, had always assumed he was embellishing for comedic effect, and were probably more surprised at how much accuracy there was in the ones Heard investigated. (Heard and other critics really got their collective panties in a wad over this “Sedaris exaggerates? DUH!” outcry; the NR article’s not online evidently but here’s a Slate articleon the non scandal.)It hasn’t hurt his sales or popularity at all and it’s rarely if ever mentioned when
he’s interviewed or profiled. (Sedaris doesn’t answer questions about the truthfulness of a particular event other than to say “it’s true enough” or something similar, though he has said that he regrets some of the dirty laundry he’s shared about relatives who are still living.)

Also Sedaris’s works are usually filed under Humor which is its own thing, rather than under Non-Fiction or Biography as with Burroughs’s works. I’m reasonably sure that your favorite stand-up comics didn’t really just break up with their girlfriend and that the exchange at the restaurant they described didn’t go word for word like that if it happened at all, but it doesn’t detract from my enjoyment of them; Sedaris’s writing is more like a stand-up routine based on his life and I give it the same leeway.

And perhaps your personal opinion is important. Example:

Dave Eggers’ memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, is probably my single least favorite bestselling memoir. I know it has a huge fan base, it came heavily recommended to me, some friends whose opinions I respect loved it but (as with Tolkien) I not only couldn’t get into it but didn’t want to after so many pages. Rightly or wrongly it struck me as the contrived work of a narcissist with even its self deprecating moments being ultimately self serving. So, when Eggers’ sister Beth (a character in it) trashed the book (in a private email to a blogger that was, to her extreme embarassment and mortification, made public), stating that contrary to his claims she was far more involved in raising their kid brother than he indicates, that she was the sole caregiver of their parents during their terminal illnesses, and that he actually took credit for things she did and recorded in her diaries (which he borrowed), it makes a bigger stain on the rug of his integrity than it would if one of Sedaris’s sisters had trashed his work. Not saying it’s rational, but… personal opinions make a difference in how important something is.

23

The Library of Congress system, used by almost all colleges and many public libraries, puts each countries’ literature into a section of the P’s with a different following number for literary criticism, fiction, and other sub-classifications. That Dante isn’t in “fiction” would never have even become an issue. Fiction doesn’t exist as a section.

Technically, the exact same thing is true for the Dewey Decimal system. Fiction technically doesn’t exist as a section in Dewey Decimal either. American fiction is 813, just as Italian fiction is 853. (Each country’s fiction ends in a 3 except that Canadian fiction is 819.) Libraries just move fiction separately to make it convenient. However, if you check the Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data on the copyright page of any novel you’ll see both the LoC number and the DD number. For Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day, e.g., it’s PS3566.Y55A73 and 813’.54-dc22. For a British novel like Stephen Fry’s Making History it’s PR6056.R88M34 and 823’.914-dc21.

To crush the point even further, Dante isn’t fiction, it’s poetry, which is almost always both cataloged and shelved in the 800s. American poetry is 811 and Italian poetry is 851. In the Dewey Decimal system all of Dante’s works, biographies, and literary critiques are filed under 851 D, never 851 A. Go look it up. You say you’re a librarian? :confused: Sorry, you say you’re a librarian.

Anyway, about the OP. I don’t see how you can answer this question without turning it around and first asking, why are you asking the question? For what reason are you making these distinctions? For marketing purposes? For cataloging purposes? For personal satisfaction? For yourself? For others? Which others and why? I’d imagine you’d get very different answers depending on the circumstances that the question is asked.

24

Hybrids are too easy a way to do a hatchet job on somebody you dislike. Want to slam William Jennings Bryan? Create a character whom anybody who knows jack about the Scopes trial will recognize as Bryan, and make him into an infantile, bigoted, buffoon. Want to slam Hearst? Create a character whom absolutely everybody (especially at the time) will recognize as Hearst, turn his wife into a laughably untalented shrew, and have her leave him so that he dies alone in an empty mausoleum of a castle–which didn’t happen. If anybody complains, hey, it’s fiction.

Now I’ll go work on my novel about a president who leads his country through a civil war, frees slaves, and molests children on the side . . . his name is Ichabod Cranston.

25

Whether it’s poetry or prose, it’s still fiction.

26

Not according to the Dewey Decimal system. And since that was the subject Justin_Bailey was writing about and I was responding to, nothing else matters for my post.

If you want to argue the point, take it up with Melvil Dewey.

27

Okay. Rez him and we’ll have a chat. :smiley:

28

Not unless your liability insurance is paid up; seems to have been a terrible boss. One of the first famous people to have recurring problems with sexual harassment allegations (true trivia).

29

Forget Andy, what I really want to know is if Amy Sedaris had an actual imaginary boyfriend named Ricky or if she was just faking it.

30

Oh, you mean, they have a fiction section?

31

Melvil Dui (his preferred signature, using his ‘simplified spelling’) was born in Adams Center, Jefferson County, NY. So when Jefferson County instituted a community college, they of course named its library after him. However, it’s a component of the multi-campus State University of New York – which decided, in its wisdom, to use LC classification. So you have the delicious irony that the Melville Dewey [sic] Library uses the Library of Congress classification for shelving.