Comments on: Documentation

By: How I Got Into Nonfiction

How I Got Into Nonfiction — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 16:30:09 +0000

[...] books were the sort of pseudo-factual story that wouldn’t pass muster with today’s demand for documentation of everything. Dialogue was made up, scenes from the subject’s formative years were invented entirely, and [...]

By: The Border Between Fact and Fiction | educating alice

The Border Between Fact and Fiction | educating alice — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 10:44:50 +0000

[...] certain aspects of the historical material for drama. I’ve looked into both quite a bit as have others and feel completely satisfied that this book still is one of the best of the [...]

By: Nina Lindsay

Nina Lindsay — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 05:23:22 +0000

It’s not the documentation of every fact that’s the issue. It’s whether the author gives us the tools to understand their process, so that the reader understands the context of such statements. Use Hoose’s source notes as just one comparison. I don’t think it’s too much to ask for young readers. Plenty of nonfiction authors manage to say something about how they used their sources, rather than just listing them.

By: Jonathan Hunt

Jonathan Hunt — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 01:12:45 +0000

BOMB is the last book I need to reread for our mock Newbery discussion, but I was thinking about this issue as I read two excellent 2013 nonfiction books: WILD BOY by Mary Losure and COURAGE HAS NO COLOR by Tanya Lee Stone. I found statements in both books that would be difficult–perhaps nigh impossible–to trace to their original source. I don’t find it sloppy or irresponsible–I just think it’s virtually impossible for an author to document every single fact. This is moving closer and closer to becoming a complete non-issue for me.

By: Monica Edinger

Monica Edinger — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 20:17:37 +0000

Check out this piece in today’s NYTimes: “Three R’s of Narrative Nonfiction”: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/17/three-rs-of-narrative-nonfiction/?hp

By: Cecilia

Cecilia — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 20:12:13 +0000

Interesting take on some of these ideas in an NYTimes piece today:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/17/three-rs-of-narrative-nonfiction/?ref=opinion

By: Nina

Nina — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 16:40:08 +0000

Wendy, Mark, I’m trying to argue beyond BOMB at this point b/c you have started to convince me that I’m just not the reader for this book or author. It’s the particular way that he crafts his you-are-there moments (which other authors do approach differently) that creates a distance for me with the text. For me, as a reader, it still stands that if I’d understood more about his process within the book, that could have overcome the distance. Because my difficultly with the text is explicitly about the specific constrcution of a nonfiction narrative, I didn’t see any comparison to fiction. From a very broad step back (the “I’m just not connecting” point), sure.

(Wendy, if you really need to understand what’s missing for me, it’s still all there in my first post and subsequent comments. Don’t know how many other ways to say it, and don’t want to further distort the discussion on this book by carrying on about it any more. I appreciate the responses to my continued angling for an answer to my concerns.)

By: Mark Flowers

Mark Flowers — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 02:19:43 +0000

@Nina – Wendy’s last comment exactly voiced what I had in mind with my comparison to S&G. My belief is there is is nothing in that book that “keeps the book from being correctly understood” by the expected audience. But I DO think that you could just as easily say that by not providing additional context, Schlitz keeps the book from being FULLY understood. I think that argument would be wrong, but I think it is exactly parallel to the one you are making with BOMB, which I also think is wrong. You are saying that there is something you can imagine Sheinkin having done that would have made the book MORE clear and more FULLY understood by the reader. I’m saying (and I think Wendy and Jonathan are too) that he didn’t do what you wanted, but what he DID actually write makes perfect sense and is at the level of the child audience. That he COULD have done something differently doesn’t enter into it.

By: Wendy

Wendy — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 18:24:19 +0000

Of course it should be considered as part of the text. But what you seem to be saying is that there’s something missing, that there’s an expectation for Sheinkin to provide more of his “process”, and I don’t understand where that need is coming from. What is missing that makes BOMB less distinguished? Is there something in the backmatter or the book that is really not clear to the expected audience that keeps the book from being correctly understood? Is there necessary additional context?

By: Nina Lindsay

Nina Lindsay — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 17:59:34 +0000

Well, in all the nonfiction we are looking at, including Sheinkin, the authors include something about their process in their backmatter…now I’m sitting here without any of them on hand, but Sheinkin talks about the resources he gathered at the beginning of his bibliography, Montgomery talks about interviewing Grandin, etc. So there’s something there, usually, in every nonfiction book, usually in back, giving some context to the narrative that the author felt was important to give, but not in the narrative itself. That is part of the book, and should be considered as part of the “text,” shouldn’t it?

Wendy, in a most general way you ask: if this information isn’t there, how does it make a book less distinguished? Well, if the narrative needs the additional context in order to be distinguished (as, for instance, Danae asserts NO CRYSTAL STAIR does), and the author doesn’t provide it…doesn’t it make the narrative less distinguished?

I not quite on board with the parallels to fiction, btw. NO CRYSTAL STAIR treads a close enough line to nonficiton, but SPLENDORS & GLOOMS? Sure, there’s a context discussion there, but it’s pretty different.