Fiction and Non-fiction Indistinct in Some Cultures

Think about a two lane road. In the U.S., if there is a dotted line down the middle, cars coming in either direction can cross over the line to pass a slower vehicle, assuming the coast is clear.

Now think about the same road on more difficult terrain.  There are two lines in the middle, one solid and the other dotted. If the solid lane is on your side, you can't cross it. But if you are driving on the side with the dotted line, you can.



Traditionally, non-fiction drives on the side with the solid line. It can't cross into that other lane without being cited for a violation of the rules. Fiction, on the other hand, has the dotted line on its side. Most of the time it stays in its lane, but if it wants to or needs to, it can cross over.

But does it always really work that way? I've addressed that question and related topics in posts that readers can find here and here and here and here.

And now there is an article in The Guardian entitled "Fiction v nonfiction -- English Literature's made-up divide" that, among other things, argues that the distinction doesn't even exist in a number of other languages.

The division between “the writing of imagination and the writing of fact” that seems so obvious to the anglophone readers “doesn’t seem straightforward at all to much of the rest of the world," The Guardian quotes translator Ester Allen as saying.

It's all just "stories" in the view of people of many societies and man is by nature a story-telling animal.

The lengthy article cites a few authors writing in English who have run into problems of one sort or another over the distinction between fact and fiction, the most interest of whom is perhaps James Frey. Readers interested in what happened when Frey's best-seeing memoir "A Million Little Pieces" turned out to be something other than the life he actually lived can read about it here in another article published by The Guardian.

Stay tuned because there will probably be more to come on this topic.