Post #5

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.