Creative Non-Fiction

What is this form?
I have been - and continue to be - attracted to what Nicole Brossard names ‘fiction-theory,’ in her exceptional work THE AERIAL LETTER.
Brossard writes: “It is thus at the border between what’s real and what’s fictive, between what it seems possible to say, to write, but which often proves to be, at the moment of writing, unthinkable, and that which seems obvious but appears, at the last second, inexpressible, that this elusive derived writing, writing adrift, begins to make its mark.”

Yet I am also persuaded by the definition of creative nonfiction advanced by Lee Gutkind, founder of the magazine CREATIVE NONFICTION, in which some of my work has appeared.

Here is Jim Elkins, describing the form in a ‘conversation’:

As we continue to talk about the mosaic/prose poem/fragment style of writing which you’ve taken up, and which I find quite attractive, I’ve decided I need to say something more about it. Herewith my-what shall we call it?-an ode: So, what is this new writing? It begins with found fragments drawn from the imagined and the real. This new writing is the well-crafted pot, made to be broken, and then recollected as shards-the writer as archaeologist. In the use of fragments we have the haiku of non fiction, a new genre of inscription. Quotation is welcome but not required. Footnotes appear but are not welcome. Meandering is forgiven. It is the stitching, coalescing, and commingling-pastiche, potpourri, medley, hodgepodge. (It is a print/old culture version of hypertext.) It is writing with a voice, an attitude, a presence of mind; it is fresh, sharp, lean and angular. In this writing with pen and scalpel, what is not said counts as well as what is said. The final product is- yes-an illusion, a sense that we have stood momentarily in the presence of mystery. The new writing is, in its poetics, poetry; it reminds us, first and last, of what a nimble mind can do.

Ruthann, as you practice this new essay writing, I find it elegant, economical, sensible, practical, crafty. It’s prose doing the work of poetry, poetry for those who don’t want to worry about the line breaks. . . .

As a concession to the labels “fiction theory” and “creative non fiction,” I suppose there is a need, at times, to find for our writing, genre labels that make it possible to redefine, imaginatively, our writings. And if in turning to these new labels we find it possible to write in ways we have not previously written, then the new labels serve a purpose. Maybe there is an inescapable need for new classifying categories, and a still greater need on the part of progressives and adventurers to seek out, put to use, and inhabit these new classificatory categories.

Law

• Lesbian Legal Theory
• Law & Literature
• Pedagogy

Literature

• Creative Non-Fiction
• Fiction
• Poetry

Ruthann Robson