August 14th, 2012
ljdigital
Why nonfiction writers should take a 'Vow of Chastity'

A point I made on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” — the day she pilloried James Frey for his exaggerations in “A Million Little Pieces”: When you learn that a story or anecdote in a literary work is not true, you begin to doubt everything in that work. And when you learn that a work has been debunked as untrue or unreliable, you begin to doubt the truthfulness of every author and the reliability of every text — an effect that is caustic to any culture.

How far do you think the line of nonfiction is allowed to go?

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journalism reporting writing nonfiction fiction poynter article interesting
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A blog created by the Literary Journalism Department @ the University of California, Irvine, dedicated to discussions about non-fiction narratives in this ever-evolving era of E-books, E-readers, Blogs, Instapaper, The Atavist, Byliner, Amazon's Kindle Singles and all other new media outlets open to promoting great journalism. LJ Digital is managed by Asst. Prof. Erika Hayasaki and Cleo Tobbi, intern and UCI literary journalism student.

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