Brave New Wednesday was easy this week. It was the first day of school! This semester finds me in Contemporary American Authors – more reading than writing. I can tell already it is going to be an interesting class. Before the instructor even arrived, the room was loud, which is highly unusual for a room full of writers, especially a room full writers who don’t know each other. From what I can gather, the objective of the class is to read things we hate, but in a good way. I’ll take it. I have a good feeling about this one, and not just because when I mentioned Kawabata, the instructor’s response was “Is he the one with the foot fetish?” (He’s not.)
A brief exchange after class got me thinking about the difference between creative non-fiction and fiction. Mr. Instructor is into breaking down the barrier between the two, and although I hadn’t thought of it in quite those terms before, it is a compelling concept. Even in terms of this here blog, once any event is filtered through perception, it becomes fictional. It is not as if I wake up on Tuesdays and think, “The theme for today is sandals!” Ok, bad example. It is not as if I wake up on Tuesdays and think, “The theme for today will be things happening suddenly!” The whole idea of the theme emerges as I start to write about the events, but the theme itself is not inependently factual. Just as characters in real life transform as they reach the page in fiction, real events transform as they reach in the page in non-fiction. Granted there is a little less leeway in how they transform, but still they transform. We have to make up the links. It’s all the lens of perception.
Speaking of lenses, and transformation:
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