Great post, Becky. This: "Pacifica Review does not distinguish between fiction and nonfiction, putting both under the category of “prose.” I’ll be curious to know the editorial choice behind this." All praise, Pacifica Review! I think the genre hangup is mostly pure crap, something created by the capitalist system to divide and conquer. A *really important magazine* was on the bring of accepting one of my pieces, but demanded to know if it were nonfiction or fiction and when I refused to say, they said no. Why did I refuse? Because it was a bit of both and what difference would it have made to the reader if it were one thing or another? Truth lies in all kinds of writing, so unless we're reporting from Ukraine or writing history, genre in literature is pure subjective bunkum, in my opinion. I recently dared confronting an important agent about his belief that English-language readers are not interested in what he calls "conflict fiction". I explained to him that great literature is great literature and appeals or fails based on how well it portrays the human condition, not on some kind of made up genre. And anyway, if work from countries that have suffered generations of conflict is all rejected as work in translation because it's "conflict fiction", we will never hear from those writers! Amiright? Thanks again for another excellent post.
I like how small and cozy this issue is, and the navigability is user-friendly. I used to run a publication and my issues tended to be rather large, which, I imagine, is overwhelming for anyone to go through, it was overwhelming for me to create each issue. Overtime, they became smaller and included a variety of works, including art, playlists, et cetera. Then I started publishing works blog-style, with a few posts per week. I highly recommend anyone running a publication either to keep your issues small or publish works in a type of blog.
Thanks for sharing this insight into your own magazine. I imagine there is a tension between wanting to accept as many people as you can and celebrate their work, while also wanting to make sure readers can actually handle the material.
I joined the Zoom Q&A with Pacifica Literary Review's Matt Muth today. This is my first participation in Lit Mag Reading Club. I appreciated reading the online issue, your own detailed review and your questions today, Becky, as well as the questions from the participants. It's such a good way to learn about a lit mag I knew virtually nothing about! I look forward to tomorrow's Q&A and hope to read/attend as many as I can of these Zoom Q&As in the future. Thank you so much for this offering, Becky!
I agree with Bruce that the categories of nonfiction and fiction should be preserved. Sure, all categories are merely constructs, and the two genres often overlap (especially when it comes to memoir). Yet the two diverge from the point of conception, the allegiance of the fiction writer being to the story, that of the nonfiction writer being to their lived experience. The fiction writer opens out to the world of possibility (Flannery O'Connor said fiction begins where knowledge leaves off), while the nonfiction writer looks closely at what already is. (Tim O'Brien contrasts the "story truth" of fiction with the "happening truth" of nonfiction.) Ultimately, do the two merge? Well, sure, everything ULTIMATELY becomes part of the same oozing blob of existence, but in the meantime, I hope we don't, during these increasingly wanton days, abandon distinctions that are useful, for both reader and writer, distinctions that actually enhance creativity rather than hamper it.
Interesting callback to Tim O’Brien. How I love that writer! And don’t care which stories are memoir and which are fiction either...maybe I should reread the things they carried (the whole book)
yes it's a great book. Though, as O'Brien himself says in the book (and has said at readings), they are ALL stories. To him, the distinction is essential.
I haven’t read this lit mag, and I probably wouldn’t anyway. I hate magazines that don’t distinguish between fiction and nonfiction. The two genres are completely different disciplines that require the use of different muscles by the writer. And it’s unfair to ask the reader to take the journey through a piece without knowing whether they are in the world of lived experience or pure imagination.
I’m not sure if it matters. It might; on the other hand, if it’s filtered through your brain and your memory there is always going to be an aspect of fiction to it no matter what you call it. I personally love not having to go through...”these are only thoughts but they were absolutely my true thoughts at the time so what does that make this piece?” Does anyone else have that problem? :)
Sure, but I still want to know what I’m reading. And if someone says here’s a true story, and you find out later it was all made up, you feel cheated, right?
Who cares? I mean they were real thoughts in any case….Maybe in some cases I would mind, like maybe if I wanted to know, say, how custody in 2023 is handled in Indiana divorce cases and i didn’t get the truth from a “non-fiction” memoir piece…but all of those stories have such an element of “in my case”—WELL! Now I am of two minds about it! Ha! So there is fiction/nonfiction of the first mind and fiction/nonfiction of the second mind, plus all the various combinations!
True. Which is why I wonder if it matters at all what you call it. We could each write a memoir of the sane event and they would be completely utterly different which makes the term “non-fiction” in memoir a bit lacking in meaning to me…or maybe non-fiction does have that meaning, that different writers will. Erysinly write the sane experience in completely different ways because they are Different people? It’s an intetreating question to me! I’m not sure I know what to think.
Thank you for your reflective thoughts! There's also a matter of wanting to share your work as non-fiction. Some writers may not feel comfortable sharing it as a non-fictional piece for fear of losing their job, or other reasons. There should be some flexibility in publishing. When I used to run a magazine, I didn't force anyone to be open about whether their piece is fiction or not. If they mentioned it and were okay with it being titled as non-fiction, I would make that distinction.
I just so often don’t know what to call my prose pieces! They are all non-fiction because the thoughts were real, or are they all fiction since they come from my faulty memory and no doubt have parts I either meant to invent or dud t mean to invent...! I love this Substack--thanks for the conversation!
Yes, exactly, the lines are blurry, huh? I also have pieces that don't fall into any traditional genre. Some of them are hybrid prose poems. Thank you for conversing with me :).
YES! That has been a solution for some of my very favorite pieces. I call them hybrid, usually because there is such a poetic element to the way they are written…but I love it when I can call a piece” hybrid”. You have a stack? I want to read one of your hybrids! I will see if I can find it!
Great post. One critique of it though: the opioid “crisis” resulted from people taking opioids they were not prescribed. That is, criminals. And those criminals ALONE are responsible for pain patients, even cancer patients being unable to receive the treatment they NEED. A huge part of the crisis is now that to stay alive, people have to move to illegal substances or kill themselves if in severe chronic pain.
I just hate when people don’t read studies right and conflate pieces of data that are not related in the least.
That’s the opportunity he missed and I do agree with you on that!
Great post - - and this is why we gather around the blazing fire pit of Becky's words. As to why Pacifica Review (or anyone) does not distinguish between fiction and nonfiction, I say, "Well done!" I am so tired of those post-modern bio-notes spilling over with T.M.I. . . . . . Is it only me? . . . . Am I jaded by my lifelong habit of subscribing to literary journals strictly to enjoy the writing styles, the sprezzatura of rhetorical finesse, the ideas shared, that I long for the bygone era of LITTLE to ZERO personal details in a bio-note beyond where an author published / went to school / grants and awards won? (The only personal detail I would share in a bio-note is "native New Yorker." What else must you know? Are we dating? Is this Tinder - - or a respected niche poetry journal? Are you waiting, breathlessly, to finish my poem in order to know if my bio-note will reveal I smoke, if I'm single, if I own frogs, and if I'm accomplished in the art of ikebana? Was any of that required info for my bylined piece? Probably not?) Rant over. . . . . . . . Oh, wait, there's more! . . . . . . I do not introduce my poems with more than 5 words. If you're used to reading at the microphone in Manhattan, you already know the impatient audience will be filled with loud hecklers who'll yell, "Just read the effing poem already!" [Thank you from all of us, Steve Cannon. #RIP] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . But now I have a secret reason, too: I absolutely do not want the audience to know ahead of time if my wilder and wilder poems are "fiction" or "nonfiction." . . . . . . . . . . . And so, thank you from all of us, Pacifica Literary Review, for doing your part to fight this ruinous trend of T.M.I. that has been the invasive kudzu vine of modern times.
I appreciate your advice about giving information about poems before reading them. I was just questioning how much to say before reading. But some writers are really good at sharing details that make the poem richer upon hearing.
Karen, when you're only given 10-15 mins to read, there's a decision to be made on how to spend that limited interval, yes? If an audience is VERY interested in what has been read, that's what the Q-and-A period is for. . . . I suggest choosing riveting material that does not require a long prologue to set it up. . . . . . . . . If time pressure is NOT the issue or if you are the only reader, then it's a different situation, of course.
For me, anything that reads like it could be dramatized on stage or screen feels like it’s adapting to a fictional form. So Becky’s column above is definitely nonfiction, since I can’t imagine any way you could dramatize it (nor would you want that).
But something like Joan Didion’s 1966 “journalistic” piece for the Saturday Evening Post, “Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream,” feels like fiction, feels like a movie, from the opening sentence, which you can almost hear in voiceover: “This is a story about love and death in the golden land, and begins with the country.”
When you dramatize something, you’re halfway to fiction, since life so seldom has that familiar dramatic arc. As Didion also said, “there is no narrative line to events.”
Great post, Becky. This: "Pacifica Review does not distinguish between fiction and nonfiction, putting both under the category of “prose.” I’ll be curious to know the editorial choice behind this." All praise, Pacifica Review! I think the genre hangup is mostly pure crap, something created by the capitalist system to divide and conquer. A *really important magazine* was on the bring of accepting one of my pieces, but demanded to know if it were nonfiction or fiction and when I refused to say, they said no. Why did I refuse? Because it was a bit of both and what difference would it have made to the reader if it were one thing or another? Truth lies in all kinds of writing, so unless we're reporting from Ukraine or writing history, genre in literature is pure subjective bunkum, in my opinion. I recently dared confronting an important agent about his belief that English-language readers are not interested in what he calls "conflict fiction". I explained to him that great literature is great literature and appeals or fails based on how well it portrays the human condition, not on some kind of made up genre. And anyway, if work from countries that have suffered generations of conflict is all rejected as work in translation because it's "conflict fiction", we will never hear from those writers! Amiright? Thanks again for another excellent post.
I like how small and cozy this issue is, and the navigability is user-friendly. I used to run a publication and my issues tended to be rather large, which, I imagine, is overwhelming for anyone to go through, it was overwhelming for me to create each issue. Overtime, they became smaller and included a variety of works, including art, playlists, et cetera. Then I started publishing works blog-style, with a few posts per week. I highly recommend anyone running a publication either to keep your issues small or publish works in a type of blog.
Thanks for sharing this insight into your own magazine. I imagine there is a tension between wanting to accept as many people as you can and celebrate their work, while also wanting to make sure readers can actually handle the material.
Oh for sure! Maybe having it as a blog style can avoid these conflicts.
I joined the Zoom Q&A with Pacifica Literary Review's Matt Muth today. This is my first participation in Lit Mag Reading Club. I appreciated reading the online issue, your own detailed review and your questions today, Becky, as well as the questions from the participants. It's such a good way to learn about a lit mag I knew virtually nothing about! I look forward to tomorrow's Q&A and hope to read/attend as many as I can of these Zoom Q&As in the future. Thank you so much for this offering, Becky!
Thanks for tuning in, Mary!
I agree with Bruce that the categories of nonfiction and fiction should be preserved. Sure, all categories are merely constructs, and the two genres often overlap (especially when it comes to memoir). Yet the two diverge from the point of conception, the allegiance of the fiction writer being to the story, that of the nonfiction writer being to their lived experience. The fiction writer opens out to the world of possibility (Flannery O'Connor said fiction begins where knowledge leaves off), while the nonfiction writer looks closely at what already is. (Tim O'Brien contrasts the "story truth" of fiction with the "happening truth" of nonfiction.) Ultimately, do the two merge? Well, sure, everything ULTIMATELY becomes part of the same oozing blob of existence, but in the meantime, I hope we don't, during these increasingly wanton days, abandon distinctions that are useful, for both reader and writer, distinctions that actually enhance creativity rather than hamper it.
Interesting callback to Tim O’Brien. How I love that writer! And don’t care which stories are memoir and which are fiction either...maybe I should reread the things they carried (the whole book)
yes it's a great book. Though, as O'Brien himself says in the book (and has said at readings), they are ALL stories. To him, the distinction is essential.
I haven’t read this lit mag, and I probably wouldn’t anyway. I hate magazines that don’t distinguish between fiction and nonfiction. The two genres are completely different disciplines that require the use of different muscles by the writer. And it’s unfair to ask the reader to take the journey through a piece without knowing whether they are in the world of lived experience or pure imagination.
I’m not sure if it matters. It might; on the other hand, if it’s filtered through your brain and your memory there is always going to be an aspect of fiction to it no matter what you call it. I personally love not having to go through...”these are only thoughts but they were absolutely my true thoughts at the time so what does that make this piece?” Does anyone else have that problem? :)
Sometimes non-fiction reads like fiction and vice versa.
Sure, but I still want to know what I’m reading. And if someone says here’s a true story, and you find out later it was all made up, you feel cheated, right?
That is true. But I don't know of any patterns like that in publishing. Maybe just a few cases. Which sucks, of course!
Who cares? I mean they were real thoughts in any case….Maybe in some cases I would mind, like maybe if I wanted to know, say, how custody in 2023 is handled in Indiana divorce cases and i didn’t get the truth from a “non-fiction” memoir piece…but all of those stories have such an element of “in my case”—WELL! Now I am of two minds about it! Ha! So there is fiction/nonfiction of the first mind and fiction/nonfiction of the second mind, plus all the various combinations!
Forgive me. Mathematician too!
True. Which is why I wonder if it matters at all what you call it. We could each write a memoir of the sane event and they would be completely utterly different which makes the term “non-fiction” in memoir a bit lacking in meaning to me…or maybe non-fiction does have that meaning, that different writers will. Erysinly write the sane experience in completely different ways because they are Different people? It’s an intetreating question to me! I’m not sure I know what to think.
Thank you for your reflective thoughts! There's also a matter of wanting to share your work as non-fiction. Some writers may not feel comfortable sharing it as a non-fictional piece for fear of losing their job, or other reasons. There should be some flexibility in publishing. When I used to run a magazine, I didn't force anyone to be open about whether their piece is fiction or not. If they mentioned it and were okay with it being titled as non-fiction, I would make that distinction.
I just so often don’t know what to call my prose pieces! They are all non-fiction because the thoughts were real, or are they all fiction since they come from my faulty memory and no doubt have parts I either meant to invent or dud t mean to invent...! I love this Substack--thanks for the conversation!
Yes, exactly, the lines are blurry, huh? I also have pieces that don't fall into any traditional genre. Some of them are hybrid prose poems. Thank you for conversing with me :).
Found you! Signed up! Will look for yiur Hybrid there!
YES! That has been a solution for some of my very favorite pieces. I call them hybrid, usually because there is such a poetic element to the way they are written…but I love it when I can call a piece” hybrid”. You have a stack? I want to read one of your hybrids! I will see if I can find it!
Great post. One critique of it though: the opioid “crisis” resulted from people taking opioids they were not prescribed. That is, criminals. And those criminals ALONE are responsible for pain patients, even cancer patients being unable to receive the treatment they NEED. A huge part of the crisis is now that to stay alive, people have to move to illegal substances or kill themselves if in severe chronic pain.
I just hate when people don’t read studies right and conflate pieces of data that are not related in the least.
That’s the opportunity he missed and I do agree with you on that!
Love this newsletter!
Great post - - and this is why we gather around the blazing fire pit of Becky's words. As to why Pacifica Review (or anyone) does not distinguish between fiction and nonfiction, I say, "Well done!" I am so tired of those post-modern bio-notes spilling over with T.M.I. . . . . . Is it only me? . . . . Am I jaded by my lifelong habit of subscribing to literary journals strictly to enjoy the writing styles, the sprezzatura of rhetorical finesse, the ideas shared, that I long for the bygone era of LITTLE to ZERO personal details in a bio-note beyond where an author published / went to school / grants and awards won? (The only personal detail I would share in a bio-note is "native New Yorker." What else must you know? Are we dating? Is this Tinder - - or a respected niche poetry journal? Are you waiting, breathlessly, to finish my poem in order to know if my bio-note will reveal I smoke, if I'm single, if I own frogs, and if I'm accomplished in the art of ikebana? Was any of that required info for my bylined piece? Probably not?) Rant over. . . . . . . . Oh, wait, there's more! . . . . . . I do not introduce my poems with more than 5 words. If you're used to reading at the microphone in Manhattan, you already know the impatient audience will be filled with loud hecklers who'll yell, "Just read the effing poem already!" [Thank you from all of us, Steve Cannon. #RIP] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . But now I have a secret reason, too: I absolutely do not want the audience to know ahead of time if my wilder and wilder poems are "fiction" or "nonfiction." . . . . . . . . . . . And so, thank you from all of us, Pacifica Literary Review, for doing your part to fight this ruinous trend of T.M.I. that has been the invasive kudzu vine of modern times.
I appreciate your advice about giving information about poems before reading them. I was just questioning how much to say before reading. But some writers are really good at sharing details that make the poem richer upon hearing.
Karen, when you're only given 10-15 mins to read, there's a decision to be made on how to spend that limited interval, yes? If an audience is VERY interested in what has been read, that's what the Q-and-A period is for. . . . I suggest choosing riveting material that does not require a long prologue to set it up. . . . . . . . . If time pressure is NOT the issue or if you are the only reader, then it's a different situation, of course.
Great advice. Thanks.
Hmmmmm i thought he waffled on that topic all the way—it’s so interesting that book!
For me, anything that reads like it could be dramatized on stage or screen feels like it’s adapting to a fictional form. So Becky’s column above is definitely nonfiction, since I can’t imagine any way you could dramatize it (nor would you want that).
But something like Joan Didion’s 1966 “journalistic” piece for the Saturday Evening Post, “Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream,” feels like fiction, feels like a movie, from the opening sentence, which you can almost hear in voiceover: “This is a story about love and death in the golden land, and begins with the country.”
When you dramatize something, you’re halfway to fiction, since life so seldom has that familiar dramatic arc. As Didion also said, “there is no narrative line to events.”