A Million Little Pieces

[Jyqm]

Originally Posted by dissention

When I read novels, I don't expect to read something that the author is trying to pass off as reality to me. When I read nonfiction, I expect the works to have enough truth to them to be respectable and deserving of the label "nonfiction." I don't expect the author to invent entire criminal records, prison stays, drug offenses, involvements in train accidents, and tense meetings in rehab about how they're going to deal with all of the things they've supposedly done. It's deceptive and unfair to the reader.

That's still not really answering for me what the difference is, though. I understand the difference in expectations of literal veracity that comes with reading either fiction or nonfiction. (Also, just so we're clear on terms, when I say "nonfiction" in this thread, I'm just referring to the specific type of nonfiction that includes memoirs and autobiographies, which are of course very different from nonfiction books about history or cooking or flower arranging.) But why do those expectations make a difference in what you get out of such a book?

I think maybe I'm getting ahead of myself and making unstated assumptions, so we're not on the same page yet as far as what I'm trying to ask. So here's an attempt at explication of what I'm trying to get at: By their very nature, memoirs of non-famous people, especially those that are only tangentially or not at all related to well-known public events or history, are more or less novels in just about every aspect except the assumption that a memoir is literally true. Pick your favorite Bildungsroman (Great Expectations?) or first-person novel (Catcher in the Rye?); the only difference between it and a non-famous person's non-historical memoir is that the events described in the memoir are expected actually to have taken place. (Or am I wrong? Is there something else?)

So putting aside whether the author is a dick, how he's acting on television, and all that, and just looking at the book, what difference does it make to you as a reader if you know that the book is a first-person novel or a memoir? How do those differing expectations of truth affect how you read the book and what you get out of it?

Or is it impossible today to put the author aside in a world where any non-famous person who writes a memoir instantly becomes famous and is all over TV and the Internet? Do the author's celebrity persona and real-life actions in the present then become inextricably linked with the book?