'Dreams from My Father' was not a memoir or an autobiography; it was instead, in multitudinous ways, without any question a work of historical fiction.
There's a difference between doing memoir and writing a novel. If I had put the story of the boy killing my dog - and that was Eric also, what a little monster he was! - in a novel, even if I took it directly from life, it would be fiction.
And there are two types of stories. One type is one's own story. The other type is telling the stories of others. Thanks to this genre, writers of nonfiction can now use the tools of the reporter, the points of view and ear for dialog of a novelist, and the passion and wordplay of the poet.
So much of what I write in fiction is based on true stories.
I just love biography, and I'm fascinated by people who have shifted our destinies or our points of view.
I started out as a writer of fiction, but nobody wanted to publish my work as a young man. So I decided to put my interest in the narrative writing of biographies.
I've always been a fan of books that create an interesting blend of fact and fiction - whether it's Norman Mailer, or 'The Short Timers,' or 'In Cold Blood.' I'm a fan of that genre.
Michael Lewis has the amazing ability to take complex formulas and concepts and turn them into page-turners.
My history writing was based on what I saw in strange, exotic places rather than just reading books.
In 'Out of the Dark,' I'm talking about my own life. I'm not talking as a character or speaking as a character. I was not as free as when I write fiction.
Creative nonfiction writers do not make things up; they make ideas and information that already exist more interesting and often more accessible.
I am grateful to Stacy Schiff first of all because she can write a sentence-because she offers us her scholarship with wit, clarity, and grace. Once again, she has done what only the best writers can do: she has made the world new, again.
I'm a unicorn in the world of journalism; I've stayed in the same mid-sized city, and that staying has allowed me to write two deeply-reported books.
I get about five memoirs per week in my mailbox, and few of them inspire anything but a desire to pick up the channel changer.
I consider myself an essayist and a fiction writer. In the essays, I certainly have been influenced by some of the leading science essayists. Like Loren Eiseley, Stephen Jay Gould, Lewis Thomas.
You can look at my autobiographical pieces as source books... But, you see, my fiction doesn't revolve around autobiographical questions.
Occasionally I find a travel book that is both illuminating and entertaining, where vivid writing and research replace self-indulgence and sloppy prose.
I do think that narrative, long-form nonfiction is the perfect form because it's rooted in something very real, but we're also, you know, completely spiritual, emotional creatures driven by all sorts of desires and needs.
I began as a fiction writer - I had written three novels in my 20s and 30s. But as my work has gravitated towards literary nonfiction, or lyric essay or poetic essay, whatever you want to call it, I'm constantly beating my head against the wall 'cause I'm teaching a genre that's no longer that exciting to me and that I'm no longer practicing.
Because the kind of nonfiction I write has a plot, the events and transactions that make up a life, nonfiction offers me a break from plotting.
'Genes, Girls, and Gamow' was an attempt, even more than 'The Double Helix,' to mix science with one's personal life. With 'The Double Helix,' no one had done it before, but I thought I'd try.
The thing I always tell my writing students - I'm not a full-time instructor, by any means, but periodically I've taught writing students - what I always tell them is that the most important thing in narrative nonfiction is that you not only have to have all the research; you have to have about 100% more than you need.
As I started to read nonfiction in the mid '70s, I discovered, holy cow, there was a lot of imaginative nonfiction. Not the kind where people use composite characters and invented quotes. I hate that kind of nonfiction. But imaginative in the sense that good writing and unexpected structure and vivid reporting could be combined with presenting facts.
I think I want to write a biography, something with broad appeal, but I haven't figured out about whom.
We still go to nonfiction for content. And if it's well-written, that's a bonus. But we don't often talk about the nonfiction work of art. That's what I'm very interested in.
