100% Non-Fiction
Since when has non-fiction become a quality label?
Non-fiction is like a 100% Organic sticker saying there is no bullshit in this. Pure natural words plucked straight from the tree and nothing else. Free of the poison of fiction. This is true, not some fictitious frivolity from the entertaining pile. It claims to be serious. To tell the truth, facts, not fiction.
It fits the times. I hear the disclaimer constantly. Sticking with the facts. We document the hell out of anything. Data streams flood the corridors, flushing out the stories. Draining out the imprecise, unchecked non-data.
There’s a whole additional dictionary for dealing with this. Pick any verb and add dis-, re-, un-, mis-. What started with non- has spread.
If you are a panoramic who’s response is to step back, to zoom out, to disengage, this trend looks like a viral disease. All the missdissing, dissmissing, undissing and remissing do not lead to clarity. It is like adding more symbols to a math-equation just because it will look so much more mathy. It’s negative language, anti-wording. It does not no longer give me an unbreaking nagging of non-feeling in my off-tuitive re-non-verbal-disembodied irresponsiveness. It is fighting the language monster with words. It is applying torture to squeeze out the truth.
Non-fiction is a delusion.
Once you start noticing the ir- and the de- and the in- it rapidly becomes un-comfortable. Re-verberating in every line. The higher the demand we place on language the more evil it seems to become. Language is not evil, it is wild. Uncontainable. Not a domesticated beast of burden.
I love the living quality of language. It is open source, democratic, un-true by de-finition. Words are dangerous.
Proper non-fiction wouldn’t be a story. But if it is not a story, if there is no narrative, it doesn't tell you anything.
I want a label on my new book; 100% Fiction.
But then again it is an empty claim, because anything that can be read or told is pure fiction anyway. And if the label is fictional, it is like stickering it with “THIS IS UNTRUE”, which in turn makes me completely loose the thread of my train of marbles....?
Are you still capable of fiction?
What a weird question. It is something I noticed. These days there is friction on fiction. When was the last time you read a story? A proper one, one that didn’t have a prescribed purpose, that wasn’t an illustration of some fact. A story that did not preach, didn’t have a message, refrained from trying to convince you of or manipulate you into some mindset. A true story. Remember those?
Where the first half of the book has you fascinated to the brim while you haven’t got a clue where to place the turbulent movements. Or some that dazzle you to the brink for months after you have finished the last sentence. Or the ones that settle inside you, make a nest and live there from then on.
Have you ever wondered why — in most cases —a novel needs several hundred pages to do its thing? And what is that thing exactly? I know what stories are used for but that isn’t their purpose. The function of fiction lies on a different plane. The real power of storytelling must be sought way beyond utility.
Fiction can’t be fact-checked. We do, because we have difficulty accepting what we are told when a story isn’t true to life. But it isn’t. It’s fictitious. See how it is the other way around? Fiction doesn’t serve the facts. The facts serve the fictional. Can you also sense how weird that is? How deeply we are in denial about this little fact?
Stories cannot be used. If anything they use us to tell. To tell what? What in the pantheon’s name are tales trying to show when we let them?
True wild fiction1 has become rare. Who is still foolish enough to chase the creature into the unknown? There’s no funding. No interest. The results of the hunt are mostly ignored. So why bother? Why show up with your little pencil and notebook to tune in? Why polish and puzzle and keep on trying to catch on paper what can’t be caught?
While data floods the world, only folded boats made of pure story will keep us from drowning. We need proper scribes, illustrators, composers to storyboard the hell out of our future plans. Keep the investors at bay while we allow this team to get ready for the exploration of the aeon.
It is time for some primal creation lessons to help us survive the future2…or get through the day at least.
Of course this whole scribble is just a cloaked way to lead you to my serial novel. My attempt at riding the dragon. See it as a weekly test of your fictional status. Of how capable you still are of entering a world different from what you think of as ‘the real thing’. I challenge you. Part one is not deep. Just a puddle to get you into the water. It starts inconspicuously. No heroes or heroines in sight. It’s all just make believe….right?
Surviving The Future is also an 8 week course I can warm-heartedly recommend. If you have difficulty facing the state of the world and seek others to check that it is not you who is going insane…
join this winter’s gathering:
Thanks for the much-valued kind words for 'Surviving the Future', wild fiction rider!
Fyi, I just this morning had confirmation that Iain McGilchrist will be joining us this winter. Since it was the extent of your engagement with his work during last winter's Deeper Dive that planted the seed in me, I thought you should be the first to know!