Non-fiction Novels Research Articles

Case Study: Reclassifying a Children’s and Young Adult Literature Collection

The Children’s and Young Adult Literature Collection at Michigan State University is more than five years old and was born out of a need to support the teacher education curriculum. The collection focuses on award-winning books as well as those with a diverse aspect either in author, character, and/or subject. The collection was started in collaboration with faculty in the College of Education’s teacher education department and initially funded through a diversity grant. At the time the collection was built, it was decided that it would be classified in LCC call numbers as it is housed within a main academic library as a specialty sub-collection (rather than in a curriculum materials center or a dedicated education library). This collection is among the most widely circulated in the library and is robustly used by students in the program. The focus for these past few years has been on building the collection and maintaining the relationships that the collection supports. Over time, the collection has grown substantially and more space was allotted to accommodate it. Using LC classification made sense initially but as the collection expanded, it became somewhat unwieldy. After observing students using the collection, it was apparent that a reorganization of the collection would remove numerous pain points including obstacles to discovery. The timing was serendipitous; a new education librarian with teaching experience and expertise in children’s literature had just started and was eager to undertake such a project. This case study will explain all the steps of undertaking this project and include both public services and technical services perspective. Both are essential in considering such an undertaking. Early discussions of the project resulted in a decision to reclass titles from LCC to Dewey, and to abandon the somewhat arbitrary division of picture books and chapter books in favor of an array of shelving categories: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and graphic novels, with age range designations of children’s, middle grade, and young adult. These decisions involved cataloger re-training, changes to labeling and shelving procedures, and space considerations. The authors will explain the rationales behind these decisions and methods used to implement them.

“The journalistic criminal novel” “In Cold Blood” by Truman Garcia Capote in the context of “new journalism” problem

The success of the ‟new journalism” in the United States in the 60s of the last century had an impact on the literary process. Truman Garcia Capote's novel ‟In Cold Blood” is an attempt to create a new form of fiction and nonfiction novel, which combines the features of nonfiction and journalism. So there is a genre of ‟criminal journalistic novel”. The author is involved in the investigation of a criminal case. The analysis reveals common typological features of a crime novel. Capote's approaches to the text are investigated, which are similar to journalistic professional methods – interview, reportage, essay. A comparison with previously published works was accomplished, which localises this novel in a different epoch at a new artistic level. The study also identifies the points of contacts and variances in the evaluation of the novel in Western and Russian criticism. The article offers conclusions. Capote's novel ‟In Cold Blood” allows to be focused not only on real criminal events, but also on the moral state of American society in the proposed time frame. The novel differs from the journalistic reportage, there is a special form of a work of art-a journalistic novel-investigation. The synthesis of literature and journalism also proved fruitful for Norman Kingsley Mailer 's nonfiction novels.

La memoria del disastro: il racconto dell’Antropocene

The coexistence and connection of past, present and future is a core aspect in the books by Filhol and Macfarlane, and already announced in Sebald’s The Ring of Saturn. These writers elaborate and surpass the classic dystopias; the characteristic of their fiction and non-fiction novels consists in retrospectively projecting the image of disaster, not conceiving it only as an expectation or as the starting point of a new era. This prerogative evidently also requires the adoption of narrative forms that leave the codes of apocalyptic narration and the patterns of fiction inspired by that theme.

Rola reportażu i jego miejsce na polskim rynku książki w pierwszych dekadach XXI wieku

Literary reportage has been one of the most popular genres in Poland in recent years. Works written by Polish and foreign reporters are published by the main publishing houses in the country. A group of prominent reporters such as Ryszard Kapuściński, Hanna Krall and Małgorzata Szejnert is joined by those born in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as debutants. Their books gain literary prizes and are eagerly read by a literary audience. The goal of this article is to explain the growing interest in reportage in Poland in the first decades of the 21st century. Statistical data from reports on the publishing industry, bibliographic data from library catalogs on reportages and non-fiction novels published by Czarne and information on awards for non-fiction novels were used to determine the place of reportage on the Polish book market. In order to describe the specificity of contemporary reportages and answer the question what readers needs they meet, it was decided to analyze reportages by Polish-Swedish author Maciej Zaremba Bielawski who represents investigative journalism and a gonzo-style non-fiction novel by the American journalist Charlie LeDuff.

What Is a Novel?

The question ‘What is a novel?’ has received scant attention in the philosophical literature. Meanwhile, this question is important. In the light of this, in this paper, I would like to address it, suggesting a potential answer. I begin by defining what I call ‘novel in the restricted sense’ – the concept that covers all novels except the so-called nonfiction novels, graphic novels, and novels in verse. Then, drawing upon Jerrold Levinson’s approach to defining ‘art’, I provide a definition of the concept that covers nonfiction novels, graphic novels, and novels in verse. Finally, with the help of this definition and the definition of ‘novel in the restricted sense’, I formulate a definition of ‘novel’ <em>simpliciter</em> and defend it against potential objections.

Chronicles, Fictions, Non-Fiction Novels: The Power and Powerlessness of Literature against the Illegal Drug Trade

Chronicles, Fictions, Non-Fiction Novels: The Power and Powerlessness of Literature against the Illegal Drug Trade

The Construction of Race and Space in Thomas Dooley’s Writings: “What kind of place was Laos?”

Author(s): Sisavath, Davorn | Abstract: This article examines narratives on Laos published between the Geneva Agreements of 1954 and 1962 because this period saw the most aid workers, missionaries, diplomats, journalists, and educators in Laos, and provided Americans the most detailed knowledge of the country. Attentive to imperialist ideology and close readings of Thomas Dooley’s nonfiction account of his humanitarian journey in The Edge of Tomorrow and The Night They Burned the Mountain, I analyze the languages and tropes that enabled Dooley to conceive of Laos and Laotians as stagnant, backward and without progress, characteristics that allegedly would make them more susceptible to communism. In particular, I read Dooley’s nonfiction novels as an imperial discourse that racializes Laos’ landscape as “empty land,” which I suggest contributed to America’s eventual treatment of Laos as a military wasteland during the US air war from 1964 to 1973. Situating my work in transnational American studies, ethnic studies and cultural studies, I offer a critical analysis of Dooley’s construction of race and space in Laos, which I argue can reveal another form of America’s racial knowledge of Asia(ns) that reinforced US intervention in the region.

Us vs. Them: Cultural Encounters in Warzones through Reading American War Literature

In 1996, Samuel Huntington argued that the end of the Cold War Era marked the end of global instability based on ideological and economic differences and preferences. However, he did not predict any kind of a peaceful future for humankind but maintained that future conflicts will arise from cultural differences. The clashes are inevitable, he claims, as long as one side (usually the West) insists on imposing universalism to other civilizations whose cultural awareness is on the rise. Ever since the Vietnam War, American military tacticians have believed that the knowledge and understanding of the enemy’s culture will lead to victory, and American military academies and schools are dedicating more attention to cultural studies within their general strategy. This paper is based on the reading and analysis of several American fiction and non-fiction novels from the Vietnam and the Iraq Wars. Since all of these works are first-hand accounts of war experience and soldiers’ cultural encounters with their ‘adversaries’, the research is focused on the (im)possibility of soldiers’ true understanding and appreciation of different cultures/civilizations during wartime. It also suggests that knowing the enemy is to no avail if wars are fought with the goal of Westernizing other cultures.

The reality of trespass: Wilson Harris and an impossible poetics of the Americas

This article revisits Wilson Harris’s early work from the 1940s and 1950s within the context of his interests in the Americas. Looking at his poetry, non-fiction and later novels, I argue that his “geological turn” opens up ways to think about the wholeness of Guyanese, Caribbean and American identities and poetics. In particular, I consider Harris’s 1949 essay “The Reality of Trespass” in relation to his 1952 short pamphlet of poetry, Eternity to Season. I show how the notion of trespass is advanced by Harris in order to reimagine the apparently fixed cultural logic of conquest, colonialism and indigeneity in the Americas. Furthermore, I link trespass to his defining beliefs in cross-cultural bridging. The essay traces how Harris’s cross-cultural poetics are embedded in a commitment to intimate, even microscopic, geographies of place as well as to the transcontinental sweep of land, sea, river and symbols of belonging and wholeness.

The Role of the Reflexive Self in Mailer's Proests

In The Armies of the Night (1968) and Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1968/2008) Norman Mailer details the exploits of the anti-Vietnam war protestors and his role in the protests. With an ethnographer’s eye for detail and a novelist’s eye for imagery, he constructs a picture of youthful fear and exuberance, a totalitarian reaction to protest, and documents an America which he realises is slowing eating itself. In these nonfi ction novels, he places himself at the centre of events, interpreting the data through his own frazzled, drink-fuelled, mischievous self. This article utilises Pierre Bourdieu’s methodological framework of refl exive sociology to both critically analyse Mailer as an ethnographer and qualitative researcher and ask whether inquiry into social protest can be adequately conducted through the autobiographical gaze of a novelist. It is argued that by using such literary resources and techniques, we can, in the spirit of C. Wright Mills, move to a more public sociology where literary techniques are valued, rather than dismissed as unscientific.

“Your Credibility Could Be Shot”: Preservice Teachers’ Thinking about Nonfiction Graphic Novels, Curriculum Decision Making, and Professional Acceptance

This article examined the value of using nonfiction graphic novels as historical narratives in the social studies curriculum. Preservice teachers evaluated several graphic novels and identified attributes of graphic novels that could contribute to students’ development of historical thinking and understanding of multiple perspectives. Despite the preservice teachers’ value for graphic novels as resources and their desire to use them in their future classrooms, all of the preservice teachers identified reasons why they would not be able to use graphic novels in their future school context. The findings suggested that the preservice teachers’ desire to be accepted by their school community took precedence over their intention to use resources that they deemed engaging and beneficial for student learning.

The confusion of a genre’s definitions: non-fiction or journalistic novel?

This article discusses two definitions of the genre of novels mixing fact and fiction: “non-fiction novel” (in American usage) and “journalistic novel” (most frequent in Lithuanian usage) and compares the genre-related features of these novels as they are given in literary theory and criticism. The aim of this research is to find out whether the content inherent in these definitions is similar or even identical. The argument for this investigation is that, as opposed to American literary practice, in the Lithuanian practice the definition of the genre of novels mixing fact and fiction is not well-grounded and in general not clear; moreover, such novels are interpreted as part of popular literature and therefore get an initially negative connotation. Features of non-fiction novels and non-fiction writing are discussed on the basis of theoretical studies by Tom Wolfe, Robert Dardenne, and Frank Zipfel. Features of journalistic novel are discussed on the basis of critical works by Jūratė Sprindytė, Vitalija Pilipauskaitė and Dalia Zabielaitė. The context of the Lithuanian journalistic novel is important to this investigation as well, because these genre-related structures are introduced invoking critical analysis of Lithuanian journalistic novels. Features of non-fiction and journalistic novels are also illustrated by brief discussion of two specific literary works: In Cold Blood (2007 [1965]), the non-fiction novel by the American writer Truman Capote, and 14, 99 € (2006 [2000]), the journalistic novel by the French writer Frédéric Beigbeder. The research showed that both – non-fiction and journalistic novel – were sceptically evaluated by literary specialists. Nevertheless, eventually the non-fiction novel was recognized as being part of literature and was discussed in literary theory and criticism abroad. [...]

Il “Regno del Quasi”. Icone cinesi nelle rappresentazioni partenopee di Ermanno Rea e Roberto Saviano

The present article analyzes the use of Chinese icons as a frame for representing Naples in two recent non-fiction novels, "La dismissione" (2002) by Ermanno Rea and "Gomorra" (2006) by Roberto Saviano. Avoiding the pitfalls of identification (as it was trivialized in the 1970s by the political slogan “La Cina è vicina”), the space between China and Naples becomes a geographic metaphor for the many transformations re-shaping the reality of global trade.On the one hand, the reference to China endows Naples with the typical features of post-modern space consumption (Urry 2002), be it in the form of an increasingly immaterial trade or in the more traditional form of tourism. On the other hand, the advent of Chinese firms is at odds with the crisis of steel industry in Naples. Rea describes the whole industrialization of Southern Italy as a fragile utopia, whose failure involves both political and criminal responsibilities: on the contrary, present-day China seems to accomplish the historical processes missed by Naples. However, while the Neapolitan-based heavy industry collapses, the criminal economy of camorra appears to be perfectly “wired” and “on-the-spot”, being connected to the Chinese garment industry and to the global counterfeit market, as both authors highlight in their accounts.By no means an original invention, this spatial metaphor lays its roots in the travel journals from Communist China, such as Franco Fortini's "Asia Maggiore" [“Asia Maior”] (1956) and Carlo Bernari's "Il gigante Cina" [“China, the giant”] (1957), two examples of what Paul Hollander has named “political pilgrimages”(1992). Through this metaphor, Fortini emphasizes the misery still affecting both lands in the 1950s, whereas according to Bernari the Chinese “Land of Approximation” is strikingly similar to Naples, a city where power always depends on a series of negotiations. Despite the many continuities with the present, the meaning of this icon is totally reverted in the works by Rea and Saviano, where China embodies a rampant economic power and its morally questionable rules. Finally, the use of this spatial reference represents an implicit statement of “foreignness” and exoticism, since an Orientalist pattern is adopted to place the inner otherness of Naples within the boundaries of a blurred national identity.

Leggere i Classici in Oriente. Il mito della letteratura occidentale in Dai Sijie, Murakami Haruki, Azar Nafisi

This study focuses on three recent literary works (fiction and non-fiction novels) written by authors of Asiatic origins: the French-speaking Chinese writer, Dai Sijie, the Iranian professor, Azar Nafisi, and the Japanese writer, Murakami Haruki. In the titles of these international bestsellers (Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, Reading Lolita in Tehran, and Kafka on the Shore), we find an oxymoron: the name of a famous, canonical Western writer or character is used in an unusual context, linked to the geography of the near or far East. The consequent effect of estrangement can restore strength to literature, perhaps with greater determination than is possible in Western cultures. By using (and reversing) the coordinates of Edward Said’s idea of Orientalism and, as in Kafka on the Shore, certain concepts of the Lacanian theory, this study analyzes the transfer of the European literary myths towards Eastern cultures.

Darkness at the Heart of Recent Italian Literature

Darkness at the Heart of Recent Italian Literature

Ecologia e rappresentazione dello spazio: Saviano, Tournier, DeLillo

The main subject of the essay consists in the literary representation of environment as a mixed system, half natural and half human. The symbolic value and the great significance of ecological themes in the contemporary literature are related to this environmental double entity. The essay particularly highlights the presence and the importance of trash, waste, garbage in three contemporary fiction and non-fiction novels: Les meteores by the French writer Michel Tournier; Underworld by Don DeLillo; Gomorra, the docu-fictional report of the Italian journalist and writer Roberto Saviano about the illicit traffics of ‘Camorra’. The word ‘waste’ and his synonyms define composite and impure materials, that sometimes slips every clear distinction between nature and handicrafts: on this subject, we can think about the Pacific Trash Vortex, a sort of island or ‘Atlantis’ of garbage formed in the Pacific Ocean by the rubbish and shaped by the oceanic streams. If we can’t identify clear boundaries between nature and human activities, we can’t either separate the two dimensions from an ethical point of view. The literary works considered in the essay show the importance of admitting the weakness of the boundaries to go beyond obsolete distinctions (such as city vs country, nature vs culture).

Exploring adolescent development through the use of popular non-fiction novels

The purpose of this review is to examine the utility of using journalistic accounts of adolescence to convey the complexities of adolescent development. Three non-fiction texts are considered: Wonderland by Michael Bamberger, A Tribe Apart by Patricia Hersch, and A Hope in the Unseen by Ron Suskind. The safe environment provided by these books gives prospective teachers an intellectual space to consider their future teaching and to hear the voices of their prospective students. Moreover, exploring these non-fiction texts helps prospective teachers understand today's adolescents and allows them to reflect on adolescent identity and development using a real-world setting.

Catch-23: The Mystery of Fact (Norman Mailer's Final Novel?)

Hindsight points to the possibility (made stronger with each new piece of non-fiction) that Why Are We In Vietnam? will sound the end of Norman Mailer as novelist. The Armies of the Night, Miami and The Siege of Chicago, Of A Fire On The Moon, or so-called non-fiction novels, indicate that for the first time in his literary career Mailer is repeating himself. As the celebrated reporter of History or the journalist of belle-lettres, Mailer (of the middle years) now makes language the handmaiden of History, American-style. History makes its move, while Mailer's language now marks time. His twenty year experiment with language comes full cycle in Why Are We In Vietnam?, where he pushes the limits of language too far, until the Word boomerangs and marks him as another convert to the current distrust of language as a possible source of answers.