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Can non-fiction be literature?
Posted by Lale on 5/4/2001, 13:38:49
Which autobiographical works (or other forms of non-fiction, or semi-fiction) would you consider as literature? Should such works, if beautifully written, be classified under literature?
Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes comes to mind. There is Arthur Miller's Timebends: A Life, there is The Memoirs of Frederic Mistral...
Most of Colette's and Marcel Pagnol's books are autobiographical.
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Posted by Dave on 23/5/2001, 4:41:07 , in reply to "Can non-fiction be literature?"
There are two books that readily come to mind for me... one is Solzhenitsyn's "The Gulag Archipelago" (all three volumes, many folks are aware of only the first one), and secondly, Robert K. Massie's "Nicholas and Alexandra" which is the historical biography of the rise and fall of Russia's last czar and czarina. I cannot praise his work too highly, it is the finest and most enthralling non-fiction I've ever encountered. It should be considered a literary classic. And Solzhenitsyn? Well, it goes without saying. Thank you for this opportunity to voice my opinion.
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Posted by Guillermo Máynez Gil on 1/6/2001, 20:12:17 , in reply to "Re: Can non-fiction be literature?"
Sometimes, the border between fiction and non-fiction is hard to distinguish. I think one of the main examples is Proust's "In Search of Lost Time", where the main character is trying to recapture his past, which by the way is extremely close to Proust's own life, making it almost an autobiography.
And IT's literature, don't you think?
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Posted by Dave on 15/9/2001, 7:38:14 , in reply to "Re: Can non-fiction be literature?"
Guillermo, it has been an age (or eon) since you respoded to my comment, and I must have never noticed that your response anticipated a response.... till now. Anyhoo, I must say that I have never read Proust at all, so I can not say much about his "In Search Of Lost Time" except that from my knowledge, it is considered to be a work of literature. I'm not sure of how NON-fictional it is. Your comment though made me remember another work that I would have added to my original thoughts on the non-fiction/literature question. I think that Augustine's "Confessions" ought to be considered literature, though it is non-fictional, and definitely autobiographical.
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Posted by Guillermo Maynez on 18/9/2001, 4:25:47, in reply to "Re: Can non-fiction be literature?"
David: In fact, Proust's is strictly a work of literature. Precisely my point is that the fact that it is closely based on nonfictional stuff does not make it a non-literature work. You are right on the money with St. Augustine's autobiography, and there must be many other famous and good works of literature based on true events. One that comes to my mind is "On cold blood", by Truman Capote, which is actually a journalistic work turned into a chilling story of crime.
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Posted by Michael Sympson on 2/9/2001, 1:07:55 , in reply to "Can non-fiction be literature?"
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Posted by Michael Sympson on 3/9/2001, 7:13:54 , in reply to "Can non-fiction be literature?"
The defining criterion of course is "imagination". Even non-fiction can be imaginative literature (like Einstein's papers), and if it comes with linguistic prowess then we have a competitor with the best of all novels. All the people on my list have a vision of a "golden age" or the "good life". That is their more or less hidden point of departure; and whether in fits of bleak pessimism or simply celebrating the imagined possibility, their work reflects on it.
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