Monthly Archives: April 2010
PowerPoint’s infamy grows apace
Having gone on record against the narrative-killing malevolence of PowerPoint (“Unsure? Tell a story . . .”), I was pleased to see that the most popular story in The New York Times this week documents military commanders’ disgust with the … Continue reading
Filed under audience, evolutionary psychology, narrative
NB: Offutt’s guide to literary terms
“nonfiction: Prose that is factual, except for newspapers. “creative nonfiction: Prose that is true, except in the case of memoir. “memoir: From the Latin memoria, meaning “memory,” a popular form in which the writer remembers entire passages of dialogue from … Continue reading
Filed under fiction, humor, memoir, NOTED, vocabulary
Jack: March 20, 1997 – April 17, 2010
Gary heard Jack was making his last trip to the veterinarian, so he stopped last Friday to say goodbye and to comfort me. “The only thing I can say is what my vet told me when he put our dog … Continue reading
Filed under MY LIFE
CNF’s narrative blog contest
I like thick, type-packed, and otherwise densely off-putting literary journals as much as anyone—especially when they include something I wrote. But when the newly redesigned Creative Nonfiction arrived in my mailbox, I thought Hallelujah! I’ll be posting soon about their … Continue reading
Filed under essay-narrative
Honesty in memoir, ver. 3.1
After reading David Shields’s anti-narrative yawp Reality Hunger, I happened to be rereading Vivian Gornick’s influential treatise on nonfiction, The Situation and the Story, and saw that she holds a far different view of the reason for the memoir explosion … Continue reading
Filed under creative nonfiction, fiction, honesty, memoir, scene, subjectivity, teaching
Honesty in memoir, ver. 3.0
The etymology of fiction is from fingere (participle fictum), meaning “to shape, fashion, form, or mold.” Any verbal account is a fashioning or shaping of events. Remembering and fiction-making are virtually indistinguishable. The memoir rightly belongs to the imaginative world, … Continue reading
Filed under emotion, essay-collage, essay-lyric, evolutionary psychology, existentialism, experimental, honesty, journalism, memoir, narrative, NOTED, subjectivity, theme
Tim O’Brien on ‘mysteries of fact’
“It is my belief that plot revolves around certain mysteries of fact, or what a story represents as fact. What happened? What will happen? Huck and Jim hop on a raft (fact) and embark on a journey (fact) and numerous … Continue reading
