QUILLBLOG

CanLit complaint dept.: the literary non-fiction edition

Two weeks ago, it was writers under 40 who were being unfairly denied their fair share of the CanLit pie (or tourtière). This week, it is authors of literary non-fiction who are being left behind, writes Ken McGoogan in The Globe and Mail. We get excited about the big fiction prizes, but pay little attention to the efforts of fact-based scribes.

But McGoogan has a plan to end this disparity:

Going forward requires a slow-motion, two-step action plan. First step: We divide fact-based literature into two broad categories – narrative non-fiction and polemical non-fiction. The first includes biography, memoir, travel, popular history, true crime – you get the idea; the second comprises thesis-driven works, artful jeremiads – political, scientific, philosophical. Along these lines, we reorganize our book world.

Second step: We abandon “non-fiction.” Yes, you read that correctly. We cease to define countless literary works by what they are not, and in relation to some other genre. As a corollary, recognize that, as a concept, “creative non-fiction” has taken us as far as it can. Let it go. End result: We will be left with two fact-based literary genres, Narrative and Polemic, both on par with Fiction.

Again: Where today we have two main categories, Fiction and Non-fiction, tomorrow we have three: Fiction, Narrative, and Polemic. And that should translate into three G-Gs of equal prestige, three Giller Prizes, three Main Events – and 10 times the engagement.

Radical? If anything, McGoogan’s plan is too modest. If new names and further subdividing are the answer, then why stop at three? The category of fiction alone could be broken down into Meta-fiction, Bildungsroman, Tri-generational saga, Roman à clef, Semi-Autobiographical Novel About Author’s Divorce, Promising First Novel, Novel That Is Really a Short Story Collection in Disguise, Novel That Is One-Third Too Long, Novel That Everyone Talks About But Nobody Really Enjoys, etc.

On the non-fiction side, we could have Self-Serving Political Memoir, Addiction Memoir, First-Time Parent Memoir, Ponderous Tome By Respected Intellectual, Quirky Subway Read by Young Hipster, Book About How Some Commonplace Object Changed Everything, Book That Would Have Made a Better Magazine Article….

We can keep this going for as long as Jack Rabinovitch’s bank account holds out.