Personally when I think of non-fiction books I think of
boring recounts of wars and battles told in the driest way possible. This is
probably the reason why I never read non-fiction books. So I guess I believe
that non-fiction books, especially when talking about someone’s history, should
be as true as possible.
Half-truths are tricky, I feel like there should be
different levels of non-fiction. The closer to the actual story the more
non-fiction you are and the further away from the actual account the closer you
are to exaggerated non-fiction. Many memoirs would fit under exaggerated non-fiction
because let’s be honest, who can actually remember every conversation word for
word? And many times it is found that events in a memoir are beefed up in order
to keep the reader interested. It’s not a crime- no one would read them if they
told the whole truth, they would just end up being stories of slightly unique lives.
For that reason I don’t
blame Frey and Mortenson (Memoir writers who were found guilty of stretching
the truth) for trying to spice up their stories because they still got their
messages across and told an amazing tale. I do think that they should have
informed the readers that some events are exaggerated (Like Frey later did
after his lies were uncovered) but I don’t think that that should stop them
from being labeled as non-fiction.
David Shields on the other hand is wrong; genres help the
readers decide what to read. Without them I would have no idea what to read and
the idea of getting rid of labels in ludicrous. Our current society is all
about labeling people and while this may benefit the reader it will always
constrict the writer to one or two genres. It’s not fair, but that sadly is
life.
