Post 7

Truth in Memoirs, dicey topic right?

                My personal opinion is that memoirs don’t have to be 100% true. I’ll admit, I’ve written a couple memoirs in my time that might’ve been slightly embellished…but whenever I read a memoir I always keep that possibility of exaggeration in the back of my head. I mean come on, who believes everything they read anyway?

                However, I believe there is a distinction between memoirs and non-fiction, and any non-fiction book that lies has no right to keep its title. When an author is selling their novel as a non-fiction piece of work, they have to stand by that title and not misuse it just for the sake of selling more copies. If a non-fiction book is elaborated, what can I go back on to not doubt that the whole book itself is a lie? I understand that the whole job of an author is to “lie” to their readers, but not under the premise of a non-fiction book.

                I also completely disagree with David Shields over his opinion that there should be no lines between fiction and non-fiction. He’s crazy! Of course there needs to be a line, otherwise how can a person know whether the story they’re reading is true or not!

                The facet of whether the story is true or not really affects how much the reader will be moved by it. But just because an author is selling a great story as fiction does not mean he/she cannot still move the readers like a non-fiction novel would! It’s all about the writing quality, and if that is truly good then the label will not even matter.

Blog Post 6

Literary Fiction vs. Genre Fiction

                That’s the big question, isn’t it? Is genre fiction less worthy than literary fiction?

                My answer? No way Jose!

                Sure, genre fiction is less artsy and crafty, I’ll give you that. But let’s consider the reason why a reader would read in the first place; if it’s to just simply entertain themselves, then genre fiction is the way to go. But if a reader is searching for a challenge or something to read that will help them grow as thinkers, then, by all means, read literary fiction! It all depends on the person for one to say which is better for their time.

                Now that’s great and all, but what of the controversy over the type of literature in school curriculum? Well, as a student myself, I highly believe in Readicide. Those “classic” books we are forced to read are great books, I’m not denying that, and they do tend to contain crafts that can aid our brains to think in a deeper and more analytical level, but they’re boring. There, I said it. It’s not they don’t contain an interesting plot, the heart-wrenching story of a girl and her husband’s dead ex-wife becomes quite a suspenseful tale in Rebecca, but judging from the way the author wrote the book, she obviously didn’t consider reader’s entertainment. I feel like she lost sight of the entertaining aspect of the plot, and settled on the “artsy fartsy” aspect of it. That’s the problem with literary fiction, it fails to hold the reader’s attention, and when those readers are teenagers who have to also further analyze the book then, well…

                Forcing this literary fiction on kids in school does not do them much good. As a student, I know that most people just Sparknote the whole book rather than force themselves through that arduous torture. I believe if we went with Gallagher’s idea of a 50/50 policy, half the books we read are genre fiction and the other half literary fiction, then that would help bring back the interest of students.  They would see that reading can actually be fun, and would be motivated to try and read the higher difficulty literary fiction novels.

                An idea to enforce this 50/50 policy is to take a genre fiction book and a literary fiction book with the same themes and have students read the genre fiction book first to identify the theme, and then apply it to the more difficult literary book. For example, the theme of forbidden romance is present in Twilight (a genre fiction book) and Romeo and Juliet (a literary fiction work), so students would read Twilight first and then compare its morals/themes with Romeo and Juliet’s.

                So in conclusion, literary fiction and genre fiction are great, but we have got to remember when the best time for each is! Goodbye until next time!