Hello, everybody. I'm new here. I'm a writer of creative nonfiction (and fiction and poems and essays) and am still wrestling with concepts in writing and literature (especially creative nonfiction), that is, what makes writing "good," what "works," and how to walk just inside that fine line that separates nonfiction and fiction.

I'm going to post an essay that is actually the foreword to my second-most recent book, "Thanksgiving: The Pilgrims' First Year in America." The foreword goes into some of the devices I use to make this history not only interesting but, ideally (and with extreme risk), coming closer to a truth than the documents of the time actually express. I'd be interested in comments on that essay/foreword.

I'd also be VERY interested in having someone review "Thanksgiving," not only as a history but as a example of creative nonfiction. You can read excerpts at NLLibrarium.com. You can probably find or request the book at your public library.

Joy, I'd recommend Joseph Mitchell's collection of his famous NYer profiles, Up in the Old Hotel. He was doing 'creative nonfiction' long before the term got invented. Think of John McPhee with a mordant sense of humor, tinged by Irish melancholy. It's a tossup as to who should get most credit for immortalizing McSorley's Saloon, in NYC -- Mitchell for "The Old Place at Home" or John Sloan's paintings of the place. In particular, look up Sloan's "McSorley's Back Room," which echoes last 2 lines in Mitchell's piece (as well as Hemingway's story "A Clean Well-Lighted Place.")

I've been a fan of literary journalism for years but until very recently the existence of this genre was lost upon my shelf (or so I thought). My eyes have gobbled up in-depth stories printed in newspapers and magazines (The Chicago Tribune and Vanity Fair are examples) since I was a teen.

I joined the group to indulge in your recommendations and comments on this particular style of writing.

Happy reading!

Hello all. I look forward to this group! Right now, I would say my favorite work has been:


So, will we have a "group read?" at some point?

Tom wrote: "Thomas, actually it was Simon, above, who touted Bill Bryson. I'm afraid I've never read him, but I'm glad you found the this thread informative nonetheless."

You are correct; thanks for that. I do enjoy the topic, however. Thanks!

Thomas, actually it was Simon, above, who touted Bill Bryson. I'm afraid I've never read him, but I'm glad you found the this thread informative nonetheless.

Hi Tom:

I love Bill Bryson: I am going to add his "Notes from a Small Island" on my shelf to read. I did not know that his work fit in the category, but I will give it a go. Great! Thanks!

Thomas Hollowell
Author of Allah's Garden (Tales Press)

Though I've never read "Hell's Angels," I have vivid memories of the book itself. My father "caught" my brother reading a library copy when we were kids and had a fit. He confiscated it and returned it to the library. One of a number of parental censorings when I was a kid.

Greetings, everyone . . . I'm a newbie!

Bill Bryson's "Notes From a Small Island" and HST's "Hell's Angels" rank as two of my favorite works of creative nonfiction (with many more titles on the list, including the various works of Jon Krakauer). Anyway, just wanted to introduce myself!

Cheers,

Simon

For a country that loves to tout its free press, we sure seem to spend a lot of time spying on, maligning, blaming, even on occasion jailing members of the press. Back in the summer, shortly after Republican convention, there was a really disturbing video showing reporters being assaulted and arrested for simply trying to cover a protest that turned ugly. A friend said it reminded him of Putin's Russia. At least no reporters here have been poisoned or ambushed and shot ... yet.

On the other hand, I was shocked to learn a while back that Peter Matthiessen, founder of Paris Review, author of Snow Leopard, among many other books, worked for the CIA during his early years in Paris, in the 50s. Apparently, he wasn't a full-fledged agent, but they recruited him to report on some potentially "subversive" leftist artists in Europe at the time. This seems so at odds with such a free-spirit like PM, a practicing Buddhist and dedicated conservationist.

As long as we have governments, we'll need intrepid truth-seekers like Halberstam and I.F. Stone, who once said, "All governments lie."

That was a pretty good segue, better than anything I can come up with now. I'm not sure if this was his last book, but he certainly was a prolific writer. I am not a huge sports fan but I'm interested in reading The Teammates as the theme seems to be friendship as much as baseball.

Also, I thought I'd add a link to this interesting article about how the FBI had apparently been keeping tabs on Halberstam for more than 20 years: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/08...

Cheers! Thanks for the conversation.

Blinded by their brightness .... "blinded by the light, wrapped up in a deuce, another roamer in the night ... " shades of Manfred Mann and later Bruce Sprinsteen (I never could figure out the words to that song, but perhaps a fitting punishment for McNamara would be to force him to listen to that song at 78 speed -- warp speed for old vinyls -- that's as good a segue as I can make on that one.)

Was Coldest War H's last book before he was killed in car accident? I seem to recall he was working on something else at time of death (when wasn't he working on something?) Nevertheless, he was good on baseball, as well (and not as pedantic as George Will's baseball books; what is it about political writers that makes them swoon over sports, especially baseball?). I read one of his baseball books, based on the season of DiMaggio's 56 game hitting streak, I think -- '46, '47, sometime around then. It was good, as I recall. He also wrote on on '62 season, I believe. He will be missed.

"TQA" is a must read! Movie version, with Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser, is pretty good, too.

Tom, maybe they were blinded by their brightness? I will have to find a copy of "The Quiet American." For now, I seem to be on a Halberstam kick. I went to the bookstore for no specific reason (not a good sign if I want to hold onto my money) and walked out with "The Coldest War" Halberstam's book on the Korean War.

Ah, right you are, Karen. I should've remembered because it's precisely the kind of historical irony Rich loves to cite in his columns. Thanks for the reminder and link (I never tire of rereading FR's columns!).

Speaking of rereading books, I need to reread "B&B," as it's been many years since I did so the first time, and it is a painfully marvelous book; the nonfiction equivalent of Graham Greene's novel "The Quiet American," or perhaps more accurately, a fitting frame to Greene's novel, which eerily prophesizes the doom behind the earnest savior mentality of Pyle, the American agent in the novel, while Halberstam gives us the post mortem of such blind earnestness. (An insightful visual complement to "B&B" would be "The Fog of War," documentary about Robert McNamara, Sec'y Defense under JFK and LBJ -- one of the brightest and blindest of the allegedly bright guys.)

Hi Tom...Actually I believe it was Frank Rich of the NYT in this column: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/opinio...

It's a point well-taken, though.

It was either David Brooks or Tom Friedman, both of NYT, who recently commented that while Halberstam used the appellation "best and brightest" ironically to criticize all the Ivy League smart guys who brought us the Vietnam debacle, the term was now being used in laudatory manner to describe Obama's cabinet choices.
Beware of irony masquerading as literal truth!

Hello. I just joined. I read The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down a few years ago and enjoyed it. Same with A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe. Hmmm...what else? Right now I'm reading The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam...it's a good time to read or re-read that one in my opinion. But it is dense with facts and details and taking me quite awhile to get through.

I took it off. Yay for enthusiasm!

Oops -- sorry -- in my enthusiasm, I added one of Tom Wolfe's novels, and not a very good one--Bonfire of the Vanities. I can't figure out how to take it off the darned shelf, so if anyone else knows how, please do!

Please add books to the bookshelf (feel free to create sub-shelves) and start discussions. You can introduce yourself and your favorite creative nonfiction works in this thread.

I'm a big fan of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down.