O say, what is truth?

I’d forgotten that when you blog every day, there are lots of days when you don’t know what on earth you’re going to blog about. :) But luckily I have a list of post topics to draw from.

So, nonfiction is fiction, sort of. A nonfiction work can be generally true — there really was a Constitutional Convention in 1787, for example — but the details are always filtered through a human lens, subject to, well, subjectivity, and so you’re not coming even close to getting the whole picture. You’re just getting one person’s take on it, and even then it’s only what they think they experienced — their perception could easily be skewed or tinted by a variety of influences.

Sure, nonfiction is still mostly true. But heralding it as being more valuable than fiction seems a little silly, since a piece of nonfiction is rarely 100% “true.” (But let’s not use the word true, because fiction is often as true — or truer — than nonfiction. Truth has nothing to do with whether the events happened in reality or not. Let’s use accurate instead.) Details change in the telling, memories are often faulty, and since we really can’t perceive all that much at a time, we’re operating from a limited perspective anyway. We’re going to get it wrong a lot of the time, and that’s just a fact of life.

Nonfiction is great, and I love it, but in my mind it’s not better or worse than fiction — it’s just different.

It’s the same with Creative nonfiction - better known as essays. Not all essayists necessarily tell the “truth” - but rather they tell the truth as they see it.

Yes, fiction and non-fiction have different, legitimate purposes. I would say the difference is that non-fiction intends to be factual in its truth-telling (or deception, depending on the author) and fiction intends to be symbolic in it. I say “intends” because they can each fail in their purpose.

I agree - it’s essential that we differentiate between accounts that are merely “factual” or “accurate” and those that are “true,” just as you mentioned, Ben. While the scriptures define truth as “knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come,” (D&C 93:24) we mortals certainly “see through a glass, darkly” and “know [only] in part,” so it seems that our own fallen nature often (always?) limits the purity of the results of even our best efforts - just one of the myriad reasons we need the Atonement.

On a related note, I think this is at least partially why we Latter-day Saints believe in neither infallible scriptures nor infallible prophets (http://www.fairlds.org/FAIR_Brochures/What_is_Mormon_Doctrine.pdf), which is something I had mistakenly believed for a long time. (For a related quote, see http://www.shields-research.org/Scriptures/BoM/BOM_Grammar01.htm)

Marisa: Exactly. And that’s okay. :)

Andy: Agreed. But even then nonfiction ends up telling inadvertent lies. (But that’s too harsh a word for it. :))

Scott: Cool — thanks for the links, too. (And I think the infallibility bit is something that’s really pervasive. It’s close to what we actually believe, but not quite there.)