In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction

Rating:
Summary: "Electrifying" is Right!
Review: This anthology of selections from the landmark literary journal Creative Nonfiction delivers real-life drama in many voices. Among the authors are well-known writers Andrei Codrescu, John McPhee, Ntozake Shange, Charles Simic, Ruthann Robson, Terry Tempest Williams, Philip Lopate, Madison Smartt Bell, Richard Rodriguez -- and some the editor calls "brilliant newcomers." (I read that and said, "Yeah, right." He was right.) Each essay differs completely from the others, and each in its own way is exquisite -- both pleasurably and painfully so! No monotonous "victim narratives" here. That era was a necessary phase -- and you can identify its traces in this book -- but it's passed. There's suspense, information, humor, reportage, defiance, reflection. Read (in an essay by a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer) about a South Philadelphia meth addict who finds 1.2 million dollars in the street. What's he going to do with it? Or a lawyer undergoing grueling cancer treatments who discovers that her doctors have made a terrible miscalculation. Or a Jewish woman enduring the traditional Hebrew divorce ceremony in front of three rabbis and two "shlubs". Or visit with Joe, everybody's blowhard father-in-law supreme. Highly recommended reading for fans, writers, and would-be writers of creative nonfiction. Could be used as a text for teaching a course in contemporary creative nonfiction, just to show how far the genre can stretch, how it can move you, and in general what the genre can do. (Whether or not you like the editor, or Annie Dillard and her foreword -- is irrelevant.)