In our graduate writing program at USC, one of the things taught is creative non-fiction. Every so often I’ll have to explain to a lay person what “creative non-fiction” is, because it sounds oxymoronic. In essence, it’s a novelistic approach to factual events. (For an example, read Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood.” Or anything coming out of the White House.)

This morning’s newspapers had me thinking about creative non-fiction, or fictionalized reporting, or something akin, as I studied two rather different versions of the same story.

From today’s Los Angeles Daily News, I learned “Heat wave blamed in 12 deaths.” (That’s the headline.) That sounds pretty bad. Except the front of today’s LA Times reports, “Heat blamed in the deaths of at least 16.” So it’s either 12, or it’s at least 16. I don’t know which is true, and their mutual placement on my breakfast table casts doubt on both. It also leaves me wondering if there isn’t another verb except “blamed.” How about “Heat wave claims 16 lives”?

Reading further, I discover that “one of the deaths is a Pasadena woman in her 80s whose body was discovered in her apartment, where the temperature was 115 degrees.” (LA Times)

Except the Daily News reports “82-year-old Lugassi Max Menahem and his wife… were among a dozen residents believed to have died from the weeklong heat wave. … Their apartment window was open, letting the 110-degree air in, and their working air conditioner was turned off.”

I applaud the Daily News for the vivid irony in its reporting (a dead couple found lying beside a working air conditioner that would have saved them). I don’t find the dead spouse in Times. Even more troubling, the Daily News says it was 110, the LA Times says it was 115, and I suspect that both are reporting from an official report rather than stationing journalists outside with thermometers to personally check the temperature. If that’s so, why does the official quoted, or the official report quoted, disagree in these two stories?

Apply this sort of thinking toward the war in Iraq. Or any other news reporting. This is not an arena where one wants creative non-fiction.

Some years ago I wrote an absurdist play entitled “Uncle Hem” in which a family’s reality comes unglued because they can’t agree on basic facts, including what they read in the newspaper. The following exchange is based on coverage of the day, in which every major newspaper save one reported the dire consequences of a passenger jet. The sole holdout, the relentlessly positive USA Today, rejoiced in the miracle of  survivors. (By this logic, more than 220 million Americans have survived the war in Iraq.)

MUM
But is that yesterday’s paper? You’ve read everything in it?

DAD
I just finished the legals.

MUM
Then it’s at least yesterday’s. But you read one newspaper, it says
“Plane crash disaster: 39 killed!” You read the other, it says, “Plane
crash miracle: 61 survive!” That could be last weekend’s
newspaper, with the wrong date. Or we could have the wrong
weekend in mind for Uncle Hem’s visit. Or that could be last year’s
newspaper and you’re a very slow reader.

DAD
When the new one comes I’ll compare them. I’ll compare the dates.

MUM
Claude, I already compared two newspapers! Two liars! Don’t
trust either one of them!

DAD
I don’t know what to think.

MUM
Oh, you’re like a bit of fluff in a hurricane.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 5th, 2007 at 10:13 am and is filed under On reading, Thoughts, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.