Tuesday’s Tidings
Fiction vs. Non-fiction
Oprah is all bent out of shape because a book that she had recommended as a work of Non-fiction turned out to have some fabricated parts. Instead of just saying to her audience, “This book should really be categorized as work of Fiction because there are some un-truths in it, but it is still a good book and a good read.” She, however, took these lies as a direct attack on her veracity and invited the author on her show for an hour of grilling. I still haven’t heard if the book is worthwhile reading, whether it is Fiction or Non-fiction. Is the book any better or worse because it is not 100% truthful?
James Frey on Oprah
Is the Bible listed under Fiction or Non-fiction?
My ex-father-in-law was a Pulitzer Prize winning author of Biographies, a Non-fiction category and I have read most of his books. In a word, they are boring, but extremely accurate. At the same time Irving Stone was writing Biographical Novels, definitely Fiction, yet much more readable and much more successful in sales and movies yet they were probably researched as much as the real Biographies. Is the book that Oprah recommended a good Non-fiction book and a bad Fiction book?
Is the Bible listed under Fiction or Non-fiction?
The guy that wrote the book was not writing for a newspaper or writing a news story and yet in recent times we have been exposed to Fiction creeping into the pages of newspapers posing as Non-fiction or “news”. Why all the hue-&-cry from Oprah? Get on with all the lying going on around us outside of the Oprah-book-club world.
On the other hand I guess the hour-long “You lied to me!!!” made for good Television.
Oprah is all bent out of shape because a book that she had recommended as a work of Non-fiction turned out to have some fabricated parts. Instead of just saying to her audience, “This book should really be categorized as work of Fiction because there are some un-truths in it, but it is still a good book and a good read.” She, however, took these lies as a direct attack on her veracity and invited the author on her show for an hour of grilling. I still haven’t heard if the book is worthwhile reading, whether it is Fiction or Non-fiction. Is the book any better or worse because it is not 100% truthful?
James Frey on Oprah
Is the Bible listed under Fiction or Non-fiction?
My ex-father-in-law was a Pulitzer Prize winning author of Biographies, a Non-fiction category and I have read most of his books. In a word, they are boring, but extremely accurate. At the same time Irving Stone was writing Biographical Novels, definitely Fiction, yet much more readable and much more successful in sales and movies yet they were probably researched as much as the real Biographies. Is the book that Oprah recommended a good Non-fiction book and a bad Fiction book?
Is the Bible listed under Fiction or Non-fiction?
The guy that wrote the book was not writing for a newspaper or writing a news story and yet in recent times we have been exposed to Fiction creeping into the pages of newspapers posing as Non-fiction or “news”. Why all the hue-&-cry from Oprah? Get on with all the lying going on around us outside of the Oprah-book-club world.
On the other hand I guess the hour-long “You lied to me!!!” made for good Television.
posted by Michael at
7:14:00 AM
1 Comments:
My daughter started to read that book but put it down. She said it got tedious and boring because he didn't use quotation marks when a character spoke. So maybe it defies convention by being bad fiction/non-fiction. Was it Nietzsche who said there is no truth, only interpretations? Nietzsche is tedious and boring too, but at least he makes for good quotations.
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