The non-fiction novel is a literary genre which, broadly speaking, depicts real events narrated with techniques of fiction. The non-fiction novel is an otherwise loosely-defined and flexible genre.
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History
It is commonly thought that this genre was formally established with the 1965 publication of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. That the genre was widely recognized in 1965 is undeniable, but influences on the genre can be traced much earlier.
Works of history or biography have often used the narrative devices of fiction to depict real-world events. Scholars have suggested that Operación Masacre (1957) by Argentine author and journalist Rodolfo Walsh was the first non-fiction novel.[1][2]
Capote argued that the non-fiction novel should be devoid of first-person narration and, ideally, free of any mention of the novelist. After the publication of In Cold Blood, many authors tested the form's "original" concept; notably including Hunter S. Thompson (1966's Hell's Angels), Norman Mailer (1968's Armies of the Night) and Tom Wolfe (1968's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test).
In Wolfe's school of New Journalism (often characterized as an invention of the mid-sixties), the novel is hybridized with journalistic narration, which, like Capote's prose, places little emphasis on the process of narration (though Wolfe, unlike Capote, occasionally narrates from first-person). Thompson's approach of "Gonzo Journalism" abandoned Capote's narrative style to intermingle personal experiences and observations with more traditional journalism.
Mailer's Pulitzer Prize-winning Armies of the Night is perhaps the most critically appreciated non-fiction novel, a narrative which is split into a history and a novel, and which autobiographically recounts the March on the Pentagon in 1967 from the third person.
In the 1970s, authors began to re-publish essays or articles by uniting episodic works into a more more cohesive whole, such as Michael Herr's non-fiction novel, Dispatches, which reflected on the journalist's reporting from Vietnam.
Since the '70s, the non-fiction novel has somewhat fallen out of favor. However, forms such as the extended essay, the memoir, and the biography (and autobiography) can explore similar territory: Joan Didion, for instance, has never called her own work a "non-fiction novel," while she has been repeatedly credited for doing so with what she generally calls "extended" or "long" essays.
References
- ^ Waisbord, Silvio (2000). Watchdog Journalism in South America: News, Accountability, and Democracy. New York: Columbia University Press. p. 282 pages. ISBN 0231119755. http://books.google.com/books?id=2QysUwD0UNAC.
- ^ Link, Daniel (2007). "Rethinking past present". Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas (Routledge) 40 (75(2)): 218–230. doi:. http://www.informaworld.com/index/783193049.pdf.
External links
See also
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