The Issue with Half-Truths

In my opinion, Books have to be totally, and I mean like a hundred percent, true for them to be considered non-fiction.

Half-truths are fine. BUT, they’re not non-fiction. They can be fictional novels ‘inspired by true events,’ but they are not non-fiction. I don’t think there’d be any issue with Frey bending the truth to tell his story, because his story didn’t (to my knowledge) affect anyone, other than Oprah, but that is a whole different story. Mortenson, on the other hand, I have a problem with. The reason for this is because he features a village in his ‘non-fiction’ stories. Sure, he did go to a village, but not at the time he claimed to in the book and he didn’t even go to the right place. The whole situation with his charity bothers me. Isn’t the point of a charity to help a person, or a group of people for whatever reason, not to boost your fame? He has besmirched (I’ve always wanted to say that) the name of charities!

                I think David Shields is partially right. I think we need some lines between genres, we don’t need all of the little teensy-tinsy sub-categories that we have now, but I do believe we need to have fiction and non-fiction differentiated. That’d be because I think fiction is so much more creative. I think it takes a very special person to be able to sit down and write a book that they magically pulled out of their head. This isn’t to say that non-fiction writers are not special, but I think fictional writers are much more impressive.

                David Shields is weird though, his works weren’t anything but a collection of plagiarized paragraphs and quotes from all kinds of different books. That’s a compilation, or a collection, and I don’t think it has the right to call it ‘his book’ or ‘his work,’ because it’s not.

                From random collections to half-truths, how can we ever know what’s the real deal? And for that reason, along with many other reasons, I’m going to continue to comfortably read my fiction books.