Post #5

     In my mind in order for a book to be non-fiction it has to be 95% true. Writing a memoir I don't expect authors to remember every aspect of their life. I don't expect the dialogue to be exact quotes or for them to remember exactly what day it was. But I do expect them to be as truthful as possible, I don't' want them adding in a family member into a conversation just for emphasis. I don't' want them to fabricate back stories, add in characters, or change where they were in their lives. Creative license is allowed in memoirs but not to the point where the majority of the story and impact of it is affected by the lies in the book.  Half-truths don't cut it in my book because the give an author a way out. A way out of being personal of giving up what truly happened, instead hiding under embellishments that make them seem more interesting. It matters for the truth not to be bent because its a slippery slop, if we accept small details to be changed authors will argue that anything they changed is small in the big picture of the novel. David Shields is wrong about erasing the boundary between fiction and non-fiction. Without a distinction written becomes chaos there will be no fact, no fiction, nothing can be trusted. As Seth Greenland pointed out , "our culture's inability to agree on the solidity of fact to be a sign of the apocalypse." Without the distinction there will be no records, nothing that can mark a document as full fact and without the facts there will be no law. Because every law there is can be disproved by the fact that anything a person writes could be true, and could let the person free of charges and implications of breaking that law.  There has to be a line between the genres or there will be no way to tell what or who to believe.