Non-Fiction Bias

Recently, I was having a discussion with some colleagues about the impact of non-fiction: its composition, its purpose, its effect.

“There’s no such thing as truly non-fiction,” one of them said with a cocked eyebrow and playful smirk. “Not really.”

We pressed her for an explanation. We are writers, editors, many of us educators or at least writing instructors. We work in words and the difference between non-fiction (true) and fiction (made-up) is as fundamental as the difference between poetry and prose. It isn’t just generally accepted: it’s gospel.  

“No escaping bias,” she said. “Intent.”

An author cannot be separated from his story and thus his bias cannot be either.

I was reminded of Descartes’s argument for the existence of God built around the questionable logic that an imperfect being cannot think up a perfect being so therefore God has to exist because no human is perfect. Then I grew uncomfortable for making two mental references to Christianity in the same literary discussion.

The bible? You wanna talk non-fiction . . .

As the day wore on and I was able to think on my own, I reviewed what I knew. Non-fiction is truth, as opposed to “based on a true story” which (as I’ve discussed on this blog before) means nothing because everything is based on a true story and based is the loaded term here. The story that whatever fiction claiming to be non is “based upon” is life.

But we’re back, because isn’t non-fiction “based upon” life as well? It’s seen and told by a person. Everyone introduces bias because it’s impossible not to.

I run the risk now of endorsing the rhetoric I so deplore that news media—other than, say, Fox or Rebel which are defined by bias (and idiocy)—have bias. The presentation of facts by the “liberal media” is what keeps Facebook misinforming and Trump tweets fuelled. Stephen Colbert said that “Reality has a well-known liberal bias.”  

Facts look like a bias when they run counter to your alternative facts.

Non-fiction should not become narrative because that’s where it runs into trouble. The story—with a beginning, middle, and end—becomes the driving force over facts that are compartmentalized or categorized or analyzed (or all of the above). The more that a character can be felt in a piece, save biography, the less factual that piece is. And when the writer is a character the ground becomes very shaky indeed.

When the author himself appears in a piece with the use of the I/me pronoun, as in an opinion piece where the usually fact-grounded journalist can vent his spleen over what those facts have been telling him and which he’s been unable to say if he works for any credible media outlet, you get strictest bias. The author writes himself as a character within the piece than you’re in the Gonzo journalism of Thompson or his tamer mimickers (still in the pages of Rolling Stone) and you can trust nothing as fact and nothing as fiction. Truth becomes as questionable as Thompson’s sobriety—but it’s all a hell of a lot of fun still.

So, we return to my colleague’s query: is there such a thing as non-fiction?

Well, the complete presentation of facts is impossible without analysis of those facts because you must keep or cut. Diction becomes murderous. What’s different between he pulled her from the car, and he ripped her screaming from the car? Analysis automatically has some sort of bias. The human element is unavoidable. No matter how hard a writer or a newscaster tries to avoid bias it’s impossible not to appear to present it, even if you hadn’t meant to. That’s how a headline “Trump Contradicts Earlier Statement” can be attacked as a liberal spin. Trump says a thing, then says the opposite, then says he never said the first thing—and it’s the media that has a problem? The Thought Police march on . . .

Perhaps the next great wave in true non-fiction, as opposed to the nebulous, wondrous, and oh-so-hard to pin down creative non-fiction genre (isn’t it all—I digress!), will be fiction that defines itself by its author’s absence. No byline, no publisher, both sides presented with tame language and full equality. Neutered news.

No, say I, better an even interpreted bias than that.