Defining Nonfiction Writing

Etymology: From the Latin, not shaping, feigning Pronunciation: non-FIX-shun Nonfiction is a blanket term for  prose accounts of real people, places, objects, or events. This can serve as an umbrella encompassing everything from Creative Nonfiction and Literary Nonfiction to  Advanced Composition,  Expository Writing,  and Journalism. Types of nonfiction include articles, autobiographies, biographies, essays, memoirs, nature writing, profiles, reports, sports writing, and travel writing. Observations I see no reason why the word [artist] should always be confined to writers of fiction and poetry while the rest of us are lumped together under that despicable term Nonfiction—as if we were some sort of remainder. I do not feel like a Non-something; I feel quite specific. I wish I could think of a name in place of Nonfiction. In the hope of finding an antonym, I looked up Fiction in Webster and found it defined as opposed to Fact, Truth, and Reality. I thought for a while of adopting FTR, standing for Fact, Truth, and Reality, as my new term.(Barbara Tuchman, The Historian as Artist, 1966)Its always seemed odd to me that nonfiction is defined, not by what it is, but by what it is not. It is not fiction. But then again, it is also not poetry, or technical writing or libretto. Its like defining classical music as nonjazz.(Philip Gerard, Creative Nonfiction. Story Press, 1996)Many writers and editors add creative to nonfiction to mollify this sense of being strange and other, and to remind readers that creative nonfiction writers are more than recorders or appliers of reason and objectivity. Certainly, many readers and writers of creative nonfiction recognize that the genre can share many elements of fiction.(Jocelyn Bartkevicius, The Landscape of Creative Nonfiction, 1999)If nonfiction is where you do your best writing or your best teaching of writing, dont be buffaloed into the idea that its an inferior species. The only important distinction is between good writing and bad writing.(William Zinsser, On Writing Well, 2006)The Common Core State Standards (US) and NonfictionOne central concern is that the Core reduces how much literature English teachers can teach. Because of its emphasis on analysis of information and reasoning, the Core requires that 50 percent of all reading assignments in elementary schools consist of nonfiction texts. That requirement has sparked outrage that masterpieces by Shakespeare or Steinbeck are being dropped for informational t exts like Recommended Levels of Insulation by the Environmental Protection Agency.(The Common Core Backlash. The Week, June 6, 2014)

Biography of Musician Lou Reed - 2503 Words

My mother was born in 1950 in Brooklyn; she grew up with Beatle-mania and after medical school moved to Greenwich Village to live amongst the beatniks. Thus, growing up listening to The Beatles, The Who, and The Rolling Stones, I knew one thing to be true: rock ‘n’ roll. These bands have been decisive parts of my transition to adulthood and have followed me throughout my life, coming in and out like crashing waves. I have spent months listening solely to The Beatles in awe of their virtuosity, hoping it will transfer to me. When I moved home back from South Carolina at the end of this summer, I began to have a profound re-obsession with The Velvet Underground. It seems everyone has their story about how this band has influenced them, for me it was a few bars into Rock Roll. I listened as a young girl to Lou Reeds lyrics: She started shakin to that fine fine music, You know her life was saved by rock n roll. And I too, felt I found my salvation. The day Lou Reed died my heart dropped. Sure, many of the idols in my record crate have come and gone (Harrison, Hendrix, Cobain), but this felt different. I never experienced the actual pain of their death as it had already happen when I begun to listen to their music. Heroin, a song that had always represented obsession and being a slave to passion, was suddenly altered after a friend of mine had died from an overdose last year. I stared out the window of the train as I was going into the city and found myself beginning toShow MoreRelatedBob Marleys Life and Times: A Critical Analysis1526 Words   |  6 Pagesbut his legend as a musician, songwriter, and advocate for freedom lives on. In many cities of the world a visitor can hear Marleys reggae music, or see people wearing T-shirts with his image on the front, or otherwise come into contact with Marleys legacy. He is truly a cultural icon, and during his life and even afterward, he has made an impact on society. In this paper his life and times and his influence on society will be reviewed and critiqued. Bob Marleys Biography According to the EncyclopediaRead MoreQuestions That Could Be Used For Interviewing Musicians1971 Words   |  8 PagesQuestions that could be used in interviewing musicians. †¨ 1. When and why did you start playing? I started to sing in a choir at the age of 5. I have always expressed myself through music, so my mom got me into the choir as soon as I was old enough to be able to sing Lyrics. †¨ 2. Which instruments do you play? My voice is my main instrument. But I do play a little bit of guitar and piano when I m writing new songs, or when I haven t got an instrumentalist who can back me up.†¨ 3. What was the firstRead MoreStephen P. Robbins Timothy A. Judge (2011) Organizational Behaviour 15th Edition New Jersey: Prentice Hall393164 Words   |  1573 PagesVillanova University Beth Livingston, University of Florida Barbara Low, Dominican University Doyle Lucas, Anderson University Alexandra Luong, University of Minnesota Rick Maclin, Missouri Baptist University Peter Madsen, Brigham Young University Lou Marino, University of Alabama Catherine Marsh, Northpark University J. David Martin, Midwestern State University Timothy A. Matherly, Florida State University John Mattoon, State University of New York Paul Maxwell, Saint Thomas University Brenda McAleer

A Farewell To Arms Essay Example For Students

A Farewell To Arms Essay Critics usually describe Hemingways style as simple, spare, and journalistic. These are all good words; they all apply. Perhaps because of his training as a newspaperman, Hemingway is a master of the declarative, subject-verb-object sentence. His writing has been likened to a boxers punchescombinations of lefts and rights coming at us without pause. Take the following passage:We were all cooked. The thing was not to recognize it. The last country to realize they were cooked would win the war. We had another drink. Was I on somebodys staff? No. He was. It was all balls. The style gains power because it is so full of sensory detail. There was an inn in the trees at the Bains de lAllaiz where the woodcutters stopped to drink, and we sat inside warmed by the stove and drank hot red wine with spices and lemon in it. They called it gluhwein and it was a good thing to warm you and to celebrate with. The inn was dark and smoky inside and afterward when you went out the cold air came sharply into your lungs and numbed the edge of your nose as you inhaled. The simplicity and the sensory richness flow directly from Hemingways and his charactersbeliefs. The punchy, vivid language has the immediacy of a news bulletin: these are facts, Hemingway is telling us, and they cant be ignored. And just as Frederic Henry comes to distrust abstractions like patriotism, so does Hemingway distrust them. Instead he seeks the concrete, the tangible: hot red wine with spices, cold air that numbs your nose. A simple good becomes higher praise than another writers string of decorative adjectives. Though Hemingway is best known for the tough simplicity of style seen in the first passage cited above, if we take a close look at A Farewell to Arms, we will often find another Hemingway at worka writer who is aiming for certain complex effects, who is experimenting with language, and who is often self-consciously manipulating words. Some sentences are clause-filled and eighty or more words long. Take for example the description in Chapter 1 that begins, There were mists over the river and clouds on the mountain; it paints an entire dreary wartime autumn and foreshadows the deaths not only of many of the soldiers but of Catherine. Hemingways style changes, too, when it reflects his characters changing states of mind. Writing from Frederic Henrys point of view, he sometimes uses a modified stream-of-consciousness technique, a method for spilling out on paper the inner thoughts of a character. Usually Henrys thoughts are choppy, staccato, but when he becomes drunk the language does too, as in the passage in Chapter 3:I had gone to no such place but to the smoke of cafes and nights when the room whirled and you needed to look at the wall to make it stop, nights in bed, drunk, when you knew that that was all there was, and the strange excitement of waking and not knowing who it was with you, and the world all unreal in the dark and so exciting that you must resume again unknowing and not caring in the night, sure that this was all and all and all and not caring. The rhythm, the repetition, have us reeling with Henry. Thus, Hemingways prose is in fact an instrument finely tuned to reflect his characters and their world. As we read A Farewell to Arms, we must try to understand the thoughts and feelings Hemingway seeks to inspire in us by the way he uses language.