John D'Agata came to my Non-Fiction class in 2002, with this very essay, and we argued this very argument, more or less. (Or maybe I should say was in 1998? Which one sounds prettier? A comment is a kind of essay, right? I can say whatever I want?) Then I saw it published at long last in Believer magazine, a year or two ago. And now this, this strange quasi-performance piece. He's been publishing this essay for 10 years. Surely, we don't have to hold artist's feet the fire all the time, but I think poetic license requires at least some cognitive dissonance, fact wrestling with soul, whereas D'Agata has no quibble. Mostly the facts he fudges can be given a wide berth, but he still goes out of bounds, even when they aren't plausibly an obstacle to good story-telling, "emotional truth", or whatever, just to be provocative, I guess. Good, he provokes an argument. In my eyes, though, this is not an issue of shades of grey. Few would seriously argue against that reality doesn't deserve some flexibility, perhaps a great deal, but I'm not one to believe that all is relative. If there's one thing this book shows me, it's that there's not a sliding scale between fact and fiction. It's something quite different.

I've never read a book quite like this before. Really gets you thinking about what is the truth, what constitutes a fact and how much "poetic license" is acceptable when writing non-fiction. A great choice, too, for know-it-alls and the people who love them!