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My Ethic of Nonfiction
May. 28th, 2026 12:46 am"Life is knowable."
That's the central conceit of any narrative, but particularly those based on lived experience. Whether told by those who experienced it, contemporary observers, or historians assembling documents after the fact, the structure of narrative implies arcs (even those narratives that defy arcs do so in a way that is conscious of and reactive toward them, otherwise they do not read as narratives at all but as code or gibberish). Arcs convey a beginning, a middle, and an end, but for the narrative to be compelling, approachable, and satisfying, these must build in certain ways and pay off at certain points in the arc.
The difference between literature and fluff merely comes down to how many arcs are interlaced and how intricately. Sophisticated narratives will build on several arcs, and elegantly told stories will absorb readers like a fractal. (Narratives are not only a text form, but "reader" has certain connotations in literary interpretation that extend far beyond the literal context of the written word.) Fractals are recursive patterns, infinitely replicating whether one zooms in or out, and I think in this scaling back and forth the conceit with which I started emerges whole: small details in the narrative prepare you for bigger details, and these even greater patterns, and the joy of reading comes from texts whose greatest patterns are themselves recursive reflections on lived experience.
Narratives are satisfying when they fill in gaps in our own understanding. It is sometimes said that "fiction uses lies to tell truths", but few ever examine its inverse partner: "nonfiction uses truth to tell lies". However many verifiable details one can cram into a narrative, the moment the author starts aligning them into patterns (both within and beyond the narrative in question), their role becomes curator not of "truth" but of a display of truths removed from their fullest context. Hell, our memories are imperfect; they reconstruct moments all the time from salient certainties, but the more times we revisit a single memory the more it becomes colored by our experience of remembering it and the less reliable it can become. (I so dread someone trying to weaponize this thought exercise to discredit individuals' memories of traumatic events that I must here add a caveat that I believe trauma changes the mind however many times the person revisits the memory and unpacking memory and unpacking trauma, though related, are not the same processes.)
Perhaps in this way, the damage to my memory over the past two years is a gift. Better to see the fuzziness than to declare infallibility.
And yet.
I have always thought my stories were important to tell not because I was important but because my attention to detail was so strong, and my knack for retracing the causes and effects of lived experiences as if they were narratives so effortless, that I must be able to preserve something that can be paid forward. If I still have any shred of my past ability to get out of my own way and see patterns that heal and inform and not let my pride get in the way, I can/should/must use that ability to preserve narratives from these impossible times.
I worry no one will believe what we're going through in a few hundred years if we don't preserve it rigorously. And it will never be perfect and it will never be impersonal and the only way to make sure it holds any truth at all -- is not subsumed in the lies I tell myself as anyone would -- is to preserve as many adjacent stories as I possibly can along the way.
That's the central conceit of any narrative, but particularly those based on lived experience. Whether told by those who experienced it, contemporary observers, or historians assembling documents after the fact, the structure of narrative implies arcs (even those narratives that defy arcs do so in a way that is conscious of and reactive toward them, otherwise they do not read as narratives at all but as code or gibberish). Arcs convey a beginning, a middle, and an end, but for the narrative to be compelling, approachable, and satisfying, these must build in certain ways and pay off at certain points in the arc.
The difference between literature and fluff merely comes down to how many arcs are interlaced and how intricately. Sophisticated narratives will build on several arcs, and elegantly told stories will absorb readers like a fractal. (Narratives are not only a text form, but "reader" has certain connotations in literary interpretation that extend far beyond the literal context of the written word.) Fractals are recursive patterns, infinitely replicating whether one zooms in or out, and I think in this scaling back and forth the conceit with which I started emerges whole: small details in the narrative prepare you for bigger details, and these even greater patterns, and the joy of reading comes from texts whose greatest patterns are themselves recursive reflections on lived experience.
Narratives are satisfying when they fill in gaps in our own understanding. It is sometimes said that "fiction uses lies to tell truths", but few ever examine its inverse partner: "nonfiction uses truth to tell lies". However many verifiable details one can cram into a narrative, the moment the author starts aligning them into patterns (both within and beyond the narrative in question), their role becomes curator not of "truth" but of a display of truths removed from their fullest context. Hell, our memories are imperfect; they reconstruct moments all the time from salient certainties, but the more times we revisit a single memory the more it becomes colored by our experience of remembering it and the less reliable it can become. (I so dread someone trying to weaponize this thought exercise to discredit individuals' memories of traumatic events that I must here add a caveat that I believe trauma changes the mind however many times the person revisits the memory and unpacking memory and unpacking trauma, though related, are not the same processes.)
Perhaps in this way, the damage to my memory over the past two years is a gift. Better to see the fuzziness than to declare infallibility.
And yet.
I have always thought my stories were important to tell not because I was important but because my attention to detail was so strong, and my knack for retracing the causes and effects of lived experiences as if they were narratives so effortless, that I must be able to preserve something that can be paid forward. If I still have any shred of my past ability to get out of my own way and see patterns that heal and inform and not let my pride get in the way, I can/should/must use that ability to preserve narratives from these impossible times.
I worry no one will believe what we're going through in a few hundred years if we don't preserve it rigorously. And it will never be perfect and it will never be impersonal and the only way to make sure it holds any truth at all -- is not subsumed in the lies I tell myself as anyone would -- is to preserve as many adjacent stories as I possibly can along the way.
