Creative Nonfiction Read online

  FACULTY PRAISE FOR CREATIVE NONFICTION

  Philip Gerard is the best kind of writing coach-he doesn't ask students to

  do anything he hasn't done. And when it comes to writing, he's done it all.

  In Creative Nonfiction he takes students through each step in the writing

  process, from initial concept to a polished, publishable piece. He arms writers

  with all the tools necessary for getting the facts and telling a good story. His

  book is the first one to demystify this "hot" new genre.

  -Catherine Houser

  University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth

  Creative Nonfiction presents a practical balance of fictional and journalistic

  techniques, approaches to style and subject, and discussion of professional

  ethics. As a textbook, it's that rarity teachers hope for: concise, while managing an engagingly informal style. It's a confidence builder for students or novices at the form and a handy reference and review for the working writer.

  -Art Homer

  University of Nebraska-Omaha

  I can speak of Creative Nonfiction only in superlatives. It is by far the best

  text I've ever used for any class. Specific, human, clear, it illustrates on every

  page the principles Gerard articulates. I'm impressed, even moved, by its

  profound moral core. How he enunciates such clear and sincere concern for

  ethics without sounding in the least preachy is in itself a minor miracle.

  -Sally Buckner

  Peace College

  Philip Gerard takes writers on a lively journey through the newest frontier in

  creative writing. Combining practical advice with real-life stories, journalistic

  truth with creative art, this important book conveys both the theory and

  practice of creative nonfiction.

  -Diane Dreher

  Santa Clara University

  Creative Nonfiction is highly practical. It gives students a real sense of what

  it would be like to try to earn a living as a nonfiction writer. Gerard draws on

  an astonishing breadth of experience, from his own work and from the wide

  variety of writers he's interviewed for the book. His suggestions about short

  radio commentaries have opened up a new genre for my students.

  -Virginia A. Chappell

  Marquette University

  This is a wonderful book for classroom use. It is practical and it is passionate.

  Students learn the basics of good writing and receive an infusion of

  inspiration.

  -Paul Wilkes

  University of North Carolina-Wilmington

  Creative Nonfiction is an indispensable tool for anyone who wants to learn

  the craft of writing nonfiction. Philip Gerard utilizes real-life practical advice

  in every chapter with creative craftmanship. Students and professionals alike

  will find treasures within these pages.

  -Jade Quang Huynh

  Appalachian State University

  Philip Gerard does an excellent job of combining personal narrative and

  experience with solid instructional techniques for writing creative nonfiction.

  It's the best text on the subject I have found in thirty years.

  -Michael K Simmons

  Penn State-Erie, The Behrend College

  Philip Gerard combines the practical help that writers need with a clear,

  elegant writing style. That is enough to make it a valuable book. But he also

  gives us nuggets you'll want to file away and bring out every time you sit

  down to write. Creative Nonfiction is a keeper.

  -Janet G. House

  Idaho State University

  Creative Nonfiction covers the technical basics well, but it does far more,

  addressing issues of integrity, vision, and depth-suggesting the true pathways to significance in the genre. Gerard's wide-ranging citations, examples, and interviews provide the kind of "cultural literacy" students typically need.

  -Rod Kessler

  Salem State College

  Creative Nonfiction is a handbook with a soul. It's a living thing, a guide.

  Students respond to the author's personal touch. This book contains everything a teacher wants to tell students, if only there were time.

  -Catherine Rankovic

  Washington University in St. Louis

  Nothing gimmicky or glib here. Gerard actually tells you what this slippery

  genre is-or should be. Furthermore, he tells you not only what you need to

  do but also how you need to think if you're going to write something

  first-rate.

  -Leslie Lawrence

  Radcliffe College

  CREATIVE

  NONFICTION

  Researching and Crafting

  Stories of Real Life

  Philip Gerard

  University of North CaroLina at Wilmington

  WAVElAND

  PRESS, INC.

  Long Grove, Dlinois

  For information about this book, contact:

  Waveland Press, Inc.

  4180 IL Route 83, Suite 101

  Long Grove, IL 60047-9580

  (847) 634-0081

  [email protected]

  www.waveland.com

  Copyright © 1996 by Philip Gerard

  Reissued 2004 by Waveland Press, Inc.

  lO-digit ISBN 1-57766-339-X

  13-digit ISBN 978-1-57766-339-3

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Printed in the United States of America

  10

  9

  8

  7

  6

  for Tom Mikolyzk,

  who is true blue.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The author gratefully acknowledges the following writers,

  editors, interpreters, translators, producers and organizations

  for their assistance in preparing this book:

  Bill Atwill, David Haward Bain, Lisa Bain, Jerry Bledsoe,

  David Bristol, Dr. Robert H. Byington, Kevin Canty, Nancy Colbert,

  Stanley Colbert, Ted Conover, Lawrence Criner, Jan DeBlieu,

  Annie Dillard, Lee Gutkind, Katherine Hatton, Robert Houston,

  William Howarth, Pam Hurley, Kathleen Ann Johnson,

  Judy Logan, Paul Mariani, Anne Matthews, William Matthews,

  Thomas A. Mikolyzk, David Nasaw, Michael Pearson,

  Daniel Pinkwater, Jim Polson, Ron Powers, Bob Reiss, Michael Rozek,

  Norman Sims, Margaret Low Smith, Terry Tempest Williams

  The Associated Writing Programs

  The Bread Loaf Writers' Conference

  The World & I, National Public Radio

  The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

  Special thanks to Lois Rosenthal and Jack Heffron for their sound

  advice and imagination, and to Robin Hemley and Jim Trupin.

  The author is grateful to the University of North Carolina at

  Wilmington for a research reassignment that helped

  to make this book possible.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  What Is Creative Nonfiction Anyhow? 1

  CHAPTER TWO

  Finding an Original Subject 13

  CHAPTER THREE

  Researching 31

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Art of the Interview 53

  CHAPTER FIVE

  On Assignment 76

  CHAPTER SIX
r />   What Form Will It Take? 89

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Telling a True Story 112

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Putting Yourself on the Line 136

  CHAPTER NINE

  Mystery and Structure, Style and Attitude 155

  CHAPTER TEN

  Revising-With and Without an Editor 179

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Law and Ethics 193

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  A Selected Reading List for Writers 209

  Index 213

  A NOTE ON SOURCES ...

  In preparing this manuscript, I interviewed many writers and editors,

  some of them famous, some not, all of them passionate and working.

  I also attended panel discussions at writers' conferences, sometimes

  including people I also interviewed directly. Because of the awkwardness of continually having to explain the context of a spoken comment, usually I have chosen not to do so. Whenever a writer or editor is

  quoted without other citation, his or her words were spoken out loud.

  If I am quoting from a book or other published or unpublished written

  source, I have so indicated.

  In certain passages, I have made points about the working process

  of certain writers in specific books, essays or articles. I have tried to

  limit my suppositions to those that can be reasonably inferred from

  the finished piece-what the writer actually wrote. Where such insight

  was provided by direct interview, I have so indicated.

  P.G.

  CHAPTER ONE

  VVHA T IS CREATIVE

  NONFICTION ANYHOVV?

  IWriters' Conference in Vermont, when Bob Reiss approached the

  t was late

  lectern of afternoon,

  the Little the day

  Theatre before

  to give the

  the close

  final

  of the

  reading Bread

  of an

  Loaf

  elevenday marathon of readings. A warm, breezy day, with just a hint of fall in

  the lengthening mountain shadows. The Little Theatre was crowded.

  Writers and would-be writers craned forward in their folding wooden

  chairs. At the open screens of French doors along the rustic clapboard

  walls, other conferees leaned in as if watching a summer stock production of some new Eugene O'Neill play.

  Behind Reiss clustered all the literary ghosts of Bread Loaf, the

  celebrities who had stood where he was standing now and read from

  their genius: among them Saul Bellow, John P. Marquand, Theodore

  Roethke, A.B. Guthrie, Jr., Richard Wright, May Sarton, Maxine

  Kumin, Toni Morrison and the patron saint of the mountain, snowyhaired Robert Frost. This was a place of repose, a place of poetry, a literary rendezvous.

  Reiss was thin and drawn, just returned from the war zone known as

  the Sudan, where he had spent weeks behind rebel lines and survived

  mortar attacks, a harrowing unauthorized plane trip at the mercy of

  a malaria-ridden pilot, and being trampled to death by a famine-crazed

  mob of refugees.

  In his open chambray shirt over black T-shirt, with his sunburned

  cheeks and raw lanky wrists, fighting off stomach parasites and the

  accumulated fatigue of weeks in the field, he didn't look like a guy

  1

  Creative Nonfiction

  who creates literature. He said amiably, "I'm not going to read fiction

  or poetry. I'm going to read some non-fiction for all you non-men and

  non-women."

  The crowd laughed easily and then listened, intrigued.

  He read, indeed, nonfiction: a tale of suffering and heartbreak and

  idealism. The arc of the story was simple: Altruistic men and women

  try to deliver food to the starving multitude of refugees in the Horn of

  Africa. The protagonists were idealistic young people, foreign service

  officers with a humane sense of duty, and bureaucrats doing the unglamorous fund-raising and paperwork of rescue. The antagonists were distance, red tape, bad roads, the rainy season, armed and irrational political factions, time running out, and the dark side of human nature.

  The rebels made deals about food. Ordinarily peaceful people rioted

  over food. People stole food, shared food, killed for food, suffered

  without food. The conflict was compelling: Food was the prize, there

  were precious few winners, and it was a true story.

  Creative nonfiction: timely, but also timeless.

  His story didn't come out of a quiet country house or a private

  reverie. He'd gone out there into the dangerous world to find it, to

  recover it, to make it, and he had brought it back to us.

  People listened hard, some of them holding their breath. In every

  line, there was an implicit courage, a moral and physical stand against

  what was wrong with the world. Not polemic, not prescription, not

  opinion or editorial, just clean, accurate description; real characters

  who leapt to life in a few quick strokes; an overwhelming and unsettling sense of a far-off, perilous place; deft connections between CIA analysts in Washington, sacks of grain tumbling out of the blue African

  sky, an airplane bogged down in a muddy cow pasture being hauled

  out by four hundred laboring Dinkas, malnourished babies being

  weighed to determine if they qualified for extra rations, food thieves

  prowling the deadly bush after nightfall, a few choice statistics, and a

  bunch of American kids in concert T-shirts trying to do the right thing

  far from home in the middle of a shooting war.

  Nonfiction.

  Creative nonfiction.

  literature.

  2

  What Is Creative Nonfiction Anyhow?

  THE RENAISSANCE IN NONFICTION:

  A HUNGER FOR THE REAL

  These days creative nonfiction is enjoying an astonishing renaissance.

  Many of the finest writers in our literature, including eminent poets

  and novelists, are writing it. Even the National Endowment for the

  Arts recognizes the genre in its fellowship awards, and many state

  arts agencies are following suit.

  "I think it is invariably a response to crisis. Nonfiction flourishes

  in times of great upheaval," theorizes William Howarth, who teaches

  nonfiction at Princeton University and whose articles and essays have

  appeared regularly in National Geographic and The New York Times.

  David Bain, author of Sitting in Darkness-Americans in the

  Philippines, compares the present resurgence with the enormous

  popularity of reportage, factual stories, during the tumultuous days of

  the Second World War. "People needed something concrete that they

  could use to measure what was going on in the world," he explains.

  "Since we are again in a period of serious flux, without people knowing

  what's really going on or what they should believe in, that could call

  for it."

  It's always seemed odd to me that nonfiction is defined, not by what

  it is, but by what it is not. It is not fiction. But then again, it is also not

  poetry, or technical writing or libretto. It's like defining classical music

  as nonjazz. Or sculpture as nonpainting. As Reiss himself says in

  his wry N ew York accent, "I feel like the Rodney Dangerfield of

  literature-nonfiction don't get no respect."

  Historically, nonfiction was around long before fiction-at least in

  the form of the short story and the
novel-ever came on the scene.

  But nobody called it that. Farther back still, nobody seems to have

  made much distinction between the two. Aristotle divided the literary

  world into History and Poetry, and, much to everybody's surprise,

  Poetry seems to have included literary nonfiction. The Iliad of Homer

  was long considered to be "only" myth by those who cared about

  such distinctions, until one reader, Heinrich Schliemann, used it as a

  nonfictional document to discover the actual remains of Troy. A real

  place, after all, even if it was fought over by mythical gods and goddesses. Poetry and History together.

  Ron Powers, contributing editor of GQ magazine and winner of the

  3

  Creative Nonfiction

  Pulitzer Prize for media criticism, says, "The novel is a way of creating

  a mythic truth from your own personal mythos. And the contract with

  the reader is that the reader is sharing your myth, and that's powerful

  simply because we're a storytelling species. We like stories. The nonfiction act is similar to that, except that it satisfies our hunger for the real and our need to make sense, make order, out of chaos."

  TELLING STORIES, TELLING LIES

  On the face of it, the term nonfiction doesn't make much sense. No

  other genre suffers under this metaphysical definition by negation.

  The term is doubly odd when you realize that we're defining the

  factual, the actual, the things that really happened, with an explicit

  disclaimer that assures the reader we didn't make it up-as if making

  it up were the primary way to communicate the events of our world.

  As if, were any reader to come across a narrative of people, events

  and ideas-a story-he or she would assume, unless assured otherwise, that the story was fiction.

  Well, it turns out that's not such a bad assumption. Our natural

  tendency in real life seems to be to tell stories: the story of what we

  did at the office all day, the story of how we met our husband or wife,

  the story of what happened at the party last night. And, in telling

  stories, we invariably surrender to the delicious temptation to make

  fiction-or, less politely, to lie. When we're kids, being accused by

  our parents of "telling a story" means being caught in a lie.

  The nonfiction writer must always rein in that impulse to lie, in all

  the subtle ways we can shade the truth into something less than-or

  more than-the truth. The nonfiction writer must be more truthful

  than we usually require of ourselves or of each other.

  We lie a lot. We don't mean to-not always, at any rate-but no