Ether in the news:
22 July - Jamie Guiney joins the digital revolution
Maureen Scott our Digital Director presenting at the London Book Fair
Is it too soon to write off the paperback? Anna Goodall - The Independent
6 May - Sir Paul McCartney on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme
BBC World Service - The Strand - Jonathon Kent reports...
The new Literary Platform
The Guardian - London Book Fair report
The Bookseller - The London Book Fair launch
Reuters India

29 July, 2010

Truth or Fiction?

Non-fiction is such an ugly and clumsy word. I can't think of any other art form that is described in terms of what it isn't - anti-jazz, non-drawing, no-rhythm? And in its short form it's called an essay, somehow even less alluring. It reminds you of school and exams and being trapped behind a flimsy iron desk with aching knuckles from gripping your pencil too tightly.

It's not only the name that's unfortunate; non-fiction has a bad reputation as well. I read a tweet the other day from some one who claimed she just didn't do non-fiction because she liked to read something with a story. It's a common point of view, I can think of lots of friends who are just as snooty.

And yet last week there was a grand battle in the Ether Books best seller chart between Paul McCartney's eloquent plea for us all to eat less meat and Josh Raymond's atmospheric and philosophical piece (alright, essay) on rowing and the heroism and futility of elite sport.

Now Josh Raymond and Paul McCartney don't have a lot in common, one's in his twenties, one's in his sixties and one's gobsmackingly famous. What's the same is that they both use their writing to, not only tell a story but also to connect their very different lives to their readers and make them think.

I love non-fiction. I have written both and I read both indiscriminately. In fact, increasingly I think that there is not much difference between fiction and non-fiction or at the very least the boundary between them is so fuzzy as to be meaningless.

When you recount something in words you have to edit it. That means you have to shape it by deciding what to describe and put in and what to ignore and leave out. The moment you do that you have an artificial, created work. If your writing was inspired by a real event you might want to call it non-fiction but you might just as well want to change the names and call it fiction. Plenty of authors do.

One of my friends is James Young who wrote 'Nico, Songs They Don't Play on the Radio' about the years he spent as Nico's keyboard player. James was out of his head on coke for most of the time he was writing about, so his memories were pretty fuzzy. When I met him I was writing a novel about the collapse of communism and the rise of the mafia in St Petersburg. I'd lived there and witnessed many of the events in the book but I dressed it up as a novel because I felt more comfortable that way. It was easier to say 'let me tell you a story' than it was to say 'this is what happened to me'. Or as James put it; 'the reason we do what we do is so that I can get away with making up the bits I can't remember in non-fiction and you can risk getting closer to the truth in a novel'.

Sophia

So, Sit back, sip your coffee and read your favourite author whenever you want and wherever you are.

Once you’ve downloaded them they are yours, in your pocket, forever.

Toby Litt "Mobile phones and short stories were pretty much made for one another."