David Halberstam died recently, killed in a car crash, and the English-speaking world lost one of its great writers of non-fiction. I loved his books, especially "The Fifties", and would often read a book of his even if the subject matter didn't compel me -- he was just that good.
In thinking of him I keep wondering: would his books been as interesting if they were all made up? Writers -- especially genre writers -- are programmed to "show, don't tell", and those habits run deep. There are beloved exceptions -- much by Borges, The Dictionary of the Khazars, Stanislaw Lem. But by and large fiction hews to the time-honored tradition of characters and plots.
But non-fiction -- expository non-fiction -- is often exciting, gripping, compelling -- all of the things fiction is supposed to be. Is it all of those things only because it's true? I think that if someone had written a book as readable, as interesting as "The Fifties", but about a completely different world -- I think I would have loved it.
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In a way, Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men and Starmaker come to mind . . .
I've often thought of doing something similar for Califa. Perhaps a railroad guide book or something. But then I figured no one would be interested in such minutia but me...Aren't some of Jeff Vandermeer's books along these lines?
Yes, Vandermeer definitely did a lot of this sort of thing in the first Ambergris book.
It just occurred to me that Philip Jose Farmer did something along these lines with his straight-faced "biographies" Tarzan Alive and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life.
Dave Schwartz (he's got a book coming out in 2008) is doing something exactly like this on his blog.
I love Calvino and Borges, and this hits exactly the same buttons for me. He's doing it in dribs and drabs, every once in a while, and the whole thing is gradually starting to coalesce. It rocks.
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