Yesterday was Norman Mailer's 80th birthday, and he was interviewed on NPR. The interviewer asked which he liked to write better, fiction or nonfiction. While he answered nonfiction, he said something that was illuminating to me. He said that nonfiction is easier to write because the story and characters already exist. Interesting viewpoint! Would you agree?
No argument there from me (and I did hear and enjoy that same NPR interview) though I've never been a big Mailer fan.
Favorite Mailer story: Norman was once baiting a prominent feminist (might have been Germaine Greer?) when he stated his opinion that women novelists were inferior to their male counterparts because "it took balls to write." Her response, "What color ink do you dip your balls in when you write?"
nonfiction is easier to write because the story and characters already exist. Interesting viewpoint! Would you agree? ======================================= Then why do the mainstream news media and politicians persist in taking the hard road?
I have to disagree though. In my small unworthy opinion nonfiction is much harder to write than fiction. With non fiction you HAVE to have all your facts straight and no straying outside the lines of reality. With fiction you can write in any and all directions and just let your creative juices flow. Most real people (except us of course) live fairly dull lives and wouldn't make good reading.
I have to admit, I wondered about Mailer's comment, though I found it quite thought-provoking. I have read a lot about WWII, and the very best books are written by authors who have done an lot of research. To write a truly good nonfiction book takes hard work, going back to primary sources. Unfortunately, a lot of nonfiction is written from secondary sources.
Mailer says that fiction is easier to write than non-fiction, because the facts already exist?
My reaction is that's true only if you have no need to get your facts right, because you know that no one will (or can) check them. An example would be non-fiction written from notes of personal interviews.
But writing of non-fiction becomes a good deal more difficult if petty minds are so uncooperative as to expect you to check your facts and get them right. (He said, with irony)
I think both are difficult in different ways. Non-fiction is difficult because it's not only that you have to get your facts right, but you also need to select which facts you are going to present and how they are going to support your premise. Plus, I think we've already discussed in another thread the question of what is fact. Truth is a very subjective thing.
On the other hand, fiction is largely based on facts that you still have to research and get right. And with fiction you need to draw on your imagination, creativity and originality to make something worth reading. These can often become very unwieldy and difficult to organize into something coherent, cohesive and pleasing at the same time.
Truth is a very subjective thing. ------------------------------- Ah, yes, "What is truth," quoth Pilate. Here in the West, we used to think of the soviet newspaper, Pravda as being propaganda, even though pravda means Truth in Russian. Closer to home, we have the oxymoronic circumstance of right wingers' filling the press and airwaves ranting about the "liberal media." Go figure...
