Nonfiction

When we get a whiff of inauthenticity, we are made aware of just what we expect from nonfiction. So says award-winning author Jonathan Weiner. He sat on a panel alongside the thoughtful and amusing Amitava Kumar and Carmela Ciuraru. Brooklyn Book Festival's panel, Unreliable Subjects, focused on the complexity of dealing with subjects (that is, people) who are inherently unreliable. What are the dangers and ramifications of writing nonfiction that is based on the testimony of someone who is shady, or a fringe character?

In a 2010 roundtable discussion here at the Mantle, I wrote about the responsibilities of a writer in a time or place of conflict. While my opinions on the subject continue to inform my writing and the creative decisions I make, two encounters with nonfiction writing classes during the 2011 Writers in Motion study tour of America occasion a coda of sorts.

I made my way to my aisle seat in a row of three and groaned inwardly. The center seat, which had been empty when I checked online the night before, was now occupied by a tall young man, stocky enough to necessitate raising the armrest that separated my space from his. I reassured myself that this wasn’t going to be a problem—this was the short leg of my trip, from DC to Minneapolis, from which there would be a long haul to Tokyo before the final push to Manila. I could handle a few crowded hours.

When I first received the invitation to participate in Writers in Motion 2011, a project of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, I jumped at the opportunity to be involved in another IWP undertaking.

I recently finished the novel The File on H by Albanian writer Ismail Kadare, which I thoroughly enjoyed for its deadpan absurdity. Kadare won the Man Booker International Prize in 2005, which is given to a writer for a body of work rather than a single book. The File on H sends up the paranoia of a Communist country with a surveillance culture.

BEIJING - “Do you think this book should be thought of like Super Girls or Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon ?” A language partner and I were discussing the new release by Jonathan Watts titled When a Billion Chinese Jump: How China Will Save Mankind – Or Destroy It (Faber & Faber, 2010).

“Comics” aren't always funny.