The fine art of literary fist-fighting : how a bunch of rabble-rousers, outsiders, and ne'er-do-wells concocted creative nonfiction

Title:

Author:

Gutkind, Lee, author.

Summary:

In the 1970s, Lee Gutkind, a leather-clad hippie motorcyclist and former public relations writer, fought his way into the academy. Then he took on his colleagues. His goal: to make creative nonfiction an accepted academic discipline, one as vital as poetry, drama, and fiction. In this book Gutkind tells the true story of how creative nonfiction became a leading genre for both readers and writers. Creative nonfiction—true stories enriched by relevant ideas, insights, and intimacies—offered liberation to writers, allowing them to push their work in freewheeling directions. The genre also opened doors to outsiders—doctors, lawyers, construction workers—who felt they had stories to tell about their lives and experiences. Gutkind documents the evolution of the genre, discussing the lives and work of such practitioners as Joan Didion, Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer, James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, Rachel Carson, Upton Sinclair, Janet Malcolm, and Vivian Gornick. Gutkind also highlights the ethics of writing creative nonfiction, including how writers handle the distinctions between fact and fiction. Gutkind’s book narrates the story not just of a genre but of the person who brought it to the forefront of the literary and journalistic world. -- Amazon.

Physical Description:

ix, 292 pages ; 25 cm

Genre:

Literary criticism.

Subject Term:

Creative nonfiction -- History and criticism.

Publisher:

Yale University Press,

Publication Date:

2024

ISBN:

9780300251159

Publication Information:

New Haven ; London : Yale University Press, [2024]

Call Number:

809.9 GUTKIND

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607003699462	New Adult Nonfiction	809.9 GUTKIND	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

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Summary

An account of the emergence of creative nonfiction, written by the "godfather" of the genre

"When [Gutkind] stops to look back on his own evolving perspective . . . [and] reflects upon his writing career, the choices he made . . . he puts himself, and us, right back in the moment--and the results are vivid, ambiguous, emotionally resonant, fascinating."--Lucas Mann, Washington Post

In the 1970s, Lee Gutkind, a leather-clad hippie motorcyclist and former public relations writer, fought his way into the academy. Then he took on his colleagues. His goal: to make creative nonfiction an accepted academic discipline, one as vital as poetry, drama, and fiction. In this book Gutkind tells the true story of how creative nonfiction became a leading genre for both readers and writers.

Creative nonfiction--true stories enriched by relevant ideas, insights, and intimacies--offered liberation to writers, allowing them to push their work in freewheeling directions. The genre also opened doors to outsiders--doctors, lawyers, construction workers--who felt they had stories to tell about their lives and experiences.

Gutkind documents the evolution of the genre, discussing the lives and work of such practitioners as Joan Didion, Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer, James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, Rachel Carson, Upton Sinclair, Janet Malcolm, and Vivian Gornick. Gutkind also highlights the ethics of writing creative nonfiction, including how writers handle the distinctions between fact and fiction.

Gutkind's book narrates the story not just of a genre but of the person who brought it to the forefront of the literary and journalistic world.

Author Notes

Lee Gutkind has been called the "Godfather behind creative nonfiction" by Vanity Fair . He founded Creative Nonfiction magazine in 1994 and is the editor or author of more than thirty books. He lives in Pittsburgh, PA.

Reviews (1)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Gutkind (My Last Eight-Thousand Days), founder of the literary magazine Creative Nonfiction, provides an enlightening critical history of the genre. He finds the seeds of creative nonfiction in such genre-defying works as Daniel Defoe's 1722 A Journal of the Plague Year, which recreated the 1665 Great Plague of London through the eyes of a fictional narrator. Elsewhere, Gutkind notes that decades before Tom Wolfe gained fame as a practitioner of New Journalism, reporters Marvel Cooke and Ida B. Wells were employing the genre's defining techniques (writing in scenes, strong authorial voice) in their reportage on life in New York City and lynching in the American South. Thoughtfully probing controversies stirred up by creative nonfiction, Gutkind recounts how New Yorker writer Janet Malcolm's presentation of interviews she'd conducted with an embattled psychoanalyst over the course of months as taking place over a single meal, and adjustment of quotations to sell the illusion, resulted in a protracted legal battle after her subject sued for misrepresenting him (the case was decided in Malcolm's favor). The literary history fascinates, though Gutkind's accounts of arguing with his colleagues in the University of Pittsburgh English department on behalf of creative nonfiction's merits drag in comparison. Still, it adds up to a thorough appraisal of the genre. (Jan.)