I’ve been thinking a lot about voice in CNF. When do you step outside the first person POV? How do you truthfully embody your own childhood voice or past self? How can speculation function? I think that this has to do with the “what” of an essay. Form and content push and pull and ultimately must support each other. They’re like sisters in the backseat being dragged by mom and dad on a garbage road trip. Continue reading →

As we’re all knee-deep in the first few episodes of the Serial podcast, I stumbled across a video of Serial host Sarah Koenig being interviewed on The Colbert Report. While Colbert doesn’t dig too far into the details–he mainly jokes about how Koenig has become a celebrity in the podcast world–the truth stands: Koenig has become a celebrity in the podcast world. She was invited to talk on The Colbert Report, after all, one of the most mainstream TV shows in America (mainstream, that is, until the show came to an unfortunate end). Continue reading →

The hook of Sarah Koenig’s podcast Serial  is her (and her production team’s) meticulous investigation into the details of the state of Maryland’s story of how Adnan Syed murdered Hae Min Lee in 1999. Koenig lets the facts–or the mushiness of them–complicate the story to the point that her audience is unsure of who murdered Lee, confident only that the prosecution’s case against Syed is less than conclusive.

I have to think that Adnan’s being granted an appeal just this week has at least something to do with Koenig’s thorough scrutiny of the details of the story at the heart of Serial. If breathing new life into a murder trial long since adjourned isn’t an indication of the power that the presentation of research in nonfiction can have on an audience, then I don’t know what is.

The idea that a writer is selling someone out as a means to write may in fact be true, though the means in which they do this may also lead an individual to believe that they are not selling them out, but telling ones store through their own personal lends. We all poses a different lends from that of our friend, brother, mother, or neighbor. The way in which we perceive things is how we then tell a story as Didion does throughout her essays in, Slouching Towards Bethlehem. This idea is evident all throughout her essays. Continue reading →

The most important aspect of creative nonfiction is truth, which is closely followed by honesty. Without these two requirements, nonfiction would cease being nonfiction and become fiction instead. The difficult part of writing with truth and honesty is that life is very messy. There’s no way to approach something in a clear cut manner, and if the event does seem clear and simple, the author isn’t digging into it enough. As Joan Didion said in the opening of Slouching Towards Bethlehem, “writers are always selling somebody out.” The use of this quote in the introduction helps frame the reader in the knowledge that the writing will not always be clear or what they might expect. It serves as a reminder that creative nonfiction focuses on real people and real stories. Continue reading →

When Joan Didion says “writers are always selling somebody out,” she is correct to an extent. Journalists and writers have an agenda of their own that may or may not run parallel to the agenda of the subjects they write about. That said, I don’t see myself volunteering to be interviewed by Joan Didion in the near future. She is particularly incisive and has a keen ability to sneak into the more desperate sides of everyone she writes about. But more than that, all of her essays are deeply critical. Didion approaches her writing as an opportunity to show the insanity of the world she lives in, and has no interest in showing the sunnier sides of her subjects. Didion even leans a little too hard into this. Parts of her essays read as dated today. When she paints the absurdity of the culture she lives in, you can also spot where she is shaped by it.

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Joan Didion’s collection of essays in Slouching Towards Bethlehem sheds light on the true essence of the counterculture during the 1960’s. Her essay topics range from obsessions with over-inflated cultural icons to radical activists, such as the Diggers, to the biggest stereotype of the era, acid-tripping hippies. Each essay in the collection opens up a door to all the different corners of life during the sixties in and around San Francisco. And to achieve this, Didion did as any dedicated reporter would do and threw herself right into the midst of it all. At the end of the preface, she even goes as far as to claims that “writers are always selling somebody out.” Continue reading →