I generally don't write about books before I've read them, but I can't get my hands on The Lifespan of a Fact yet, as excited as I am to read it (I've requested that the library order it, so now I need to wait). But I've been hearing about it for a while, and am eagerly anticipating getting to watch the drama - essayist vs. fact-checker - unfold, and in the mean time, the New York Times has an interesting take (the article itself is interesting, vs. the viewpoint, in particular) on it:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/magazine/the-fact-checker-versus-the-fabulist.html

The Times also did a review and a hilarious (intentionally?) adapted exerpt from the book.

Basically, the book, credited to John D'Agata and Jim Fingal, traces the history of one of D'Agata's essays, after Fingal, on the publisher's side, calls into question some facts. And D'Agata, being who he is, takes umbrage not so much with Fingal's questioning of the accuracy of the facts, but with the latter's concern that the facts be accurate.

"Accuracy" in nonfiction is something I have struggled with for a few years now. More or less up until I took a writing class, Advanced Narrative Nonfiction, I was working under the assumption that nonfiction was "true" and fiction was made-up. Since most of the nonfiction I read was history, and I am a historian by training (or so they tell me) I was used to a pretty rigorous dependence on verifiable facts. Certainly, a lot of speculation was normal, and acceptable, but there was a line, and if you couldn't be damn sure something happened the way you were saying it did, you had to at least be clear when you were moving into the murkier waters of partial evidence and supposition. People weren't always, of course, but that is where peer reviewers and cranky grad students jumped in to rake your argument over the coals.

I think I interrupted the class several times at the beginning of the semester to say things like "but...how can the author be repeating whole conversations she overheard as a child? She can't possibly remember each word. This is at best an approximation of what she thinks was said, based on her memory of the event."

Yes, I was a super annoying and boring pedant. But it bothered me that we were saying this was non-fiction, and yet there were clearly "fictional" - that is to say, wholly or partially based in imagination - aspects.

The professor very patiently led us through a discussion of the...shall we say "grey zone" in modern (and earlier, but whatever) essay writing, in which the emphasis is placed on the overall, sort of metaphysical "truth" of the whole, rather than the quantifiable & confirmable accuracy of the individual elements.

Eventually I (semi-grudgingly) conceded (sort of) the point. My "eureka!" moment came when I realized that, humor aside, the Colberian "truthiness," which delighted me when it first came out, could be applied. It was a little like when I finally figured our the distinction between "gender" and "sex" (in so far as historiography, that is). More to the point, though - much like pornography, some things are accurate, but others are "real," in ways, without being strictly, by-the-book, real, and you just need to let it slide, and see the work as a whole, and in its place in the grander scheme of things.

I was actually quite proud of myself. I am not exactly prone to accepting new and different viewpoints, so I felt very open-minded and intellectually advanced. That acceptance, though, created in part by our discussion which featured D'Agata and his philosophies prominently, was frequently challenged by my irritation with my idiot classmates (not all of them, but a solid percentage).

It turns out I can roll with a lot more blurring of the lines between nonfiction/fiction and real/not-real, even leaving aside the fact I had supposedly learned those were not necessarily corresponding categories, when in the hands of an accomplished writer like D'Agata. So I have never quite decided how I feel about the whole thing, although I am decidedly clear on the fact that better writers can get away with more.

Generally, though, I tend to think that if something can be verified, it should be, and facts should be used carefully. This may be my history background again; I am really sensitive to how easily facts can be manipulated, and even something as seemingly solid as figures can be used to argue differing, even opposing, points.

"Facts," particularly when presented as "the truth" or as being "real," can be very, very dangerous. So it makes me nervous when they are handled carelessly...carelessly isn't the right word, but I can't think of a better one at the moment...without due caution?

In any case - it's an intriguing question, and one that I enjoy following down its twisty logic roads. Hence, this super-long and probably unnecessary post about a book I haven't even read yet. But it's a good excuse to get the links on here so I won't forget about them, because I want to go back and read the reviews/comments again after I read the book.

And just for fun:

Truthiness is a quality characterizing a "truth" that a person claims to know intuitively "from the gut" or because it "feels right" without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts.

For the full, awesome Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthiness