“Fiction and nonfiction accomplish very different things, but they can overlap. I wanted my fiction to seem nonfictional, and my nonfiction to seem fictional. At the same time, in fiction I could say things I couldn’t get away with in nonfiction without footnotes. And in nonfiction, I could make things explicit that I couldn’t say in fiction because of the viewpoint of my protagonist.”

—  Viet Thanh Nguyen

On the congruent nature of fiction and nonfiction in “Viet Thanh Nguyen: From both sides” https://www.writermag.com/writing-inspiration/author-interviews/viet-thanh-nguyen-sides/ in The Writer (2017 Jan 17)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Fiction and nonfiction accomplish very different things, but they can overlap. I wanted my fiction to seem nonfictional…" by Viet Thanh Nguyen?
Viet Thanh Nguyen photo
Viet Thanh Nguyen 4
American author of fiction 1971

Related quotes

E.L. Doctorow photo

“There is no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; there’s only narrative.”

E.L. Doctorow (1931–2015) novelist, editor, professor

New York Times Book Review (27 January 1988)

Peter Matthiessen photo

“I am a writer. A fiction writer who also writes nonfiction on behalf of social and environmental causes or journals about expeditions to wild places. I have written more books of nonfiction because my fiction is an exploratory process — not laborious, merely long and slow and getting slower.”

Peter Matthiessen (1927–2014) American novelist

The Paris Review interview (1999)

Yann Martel photo

“Fiction and nonfiction are not so easily divided. Fiction may not be real, but it's true; it goes beyond the garland of facts to get to emotional and psychological truths.”

Yann Martel book Beatrice and Virgil

Source: Beatrice and Virgil

Luis J. Rodriguez photo

“I do more non-fiction writing. I have two memoirs, another nonfiction book, and I do lots of essays, journalism, poetry, and reporting. But I love the fiction. As you know I have a novel, a short story collection, and two children’s books. It’s more challenging to write fiction, but I’d like to do more of these. I don’t really prefer one over the other.”

Luis J. Rodriguez (1954) pinto poetry, Chicanismo, and Chicano literature

On his writing preferences in “An Interview with Luis J. Rodriguez” https://www.epl.org/an-interview-with-luis-j-rodriguez-2/ (Evanston Public Library; 2011)

Stephen King photo

“He would write it for the reason he felt that all great literature, fiction and nonfiction, was written: truth comes out, in the end it always comes out. He would write it because he felt he had to.”

Stephen King book The Shining

Source: The Shining (1977)

Michael Moore photo

“We like nonfiction and we live in fictitious times.”

Michael Moore (1954) American filmmaker, author, social critic, and liberal activist

Oscar Speech for Best Documentary Feature (23 March 2003) http://www.oscars.org/75academyawards/winners/docfeature.html
2003
Context: Whoa. On behalf of our producers Kathleen Glynn and Michael Donovan from Canada, I'd like to thank the Academy for this. I have invited my fellow documentary nominees on the stage with us, and we would like to — they're here in solidarity with me because we like nonfiction. We like nonfiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in the time where we have fictitious election results that elects a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons. Whether it's the fictition of duct tape or fictition of orange alerts we are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you, Mr. Bush, shame on you. And any time you got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up. Thank you very much.

John Dos Passos photo

“For something like forty years I've been getting various sorts of narratives off my chest without being able to hit upon a classification for them. There's something dreary to me about the publisher's arbitrary division of every word written for publication into fiction and nonfiction. My writing has a most irritating way of being difficult to classify in either category. At times I would find it hard to tell you whether the stuff is prose or verse. Gradually I've come up with the tag: contemporary chronicle.”

John Dos Passos (1896–1970) novelist, playwright, poet, journalist, painter

Presentation at Carleton College, Nov 30 1960

John Banville photo

“Fiction is just a constant torment, and an embarrassment. I loathe my fiction. I have a fantasy when I'm passing a bookstore that I could click my fingers and all my books would go blank, so that I could start again and get them right.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

John Banville, The Art of Fiction No. 200 (2009)

George Raymond Richard Martin photo

“The real difference, to my mind, is between romantic fiction, which all these genres are a part of, and mimetic fiction, or naturalistic fiction.”

George Raymond Richard Martin (1948) American writer, screenwriter and television producer

Interview with Weird Tales (24 May 2007) http://weirdtales.net/wordpress/2007/05/24/george-rr-martin-on-magic-vs-science/
Context: I think that for science fiction, fantasy, and even horror to some extent, the differences are skin-deep. I know there are elements in the field, particularly in science fiction, who feel that the differences are very profound, but I do not agree with that analysis. I think for me it is a matter of the furnishings. An elf or an alien may in some ways fulfill the same function, as a literary trope. It’s almost a matter of flavor. The ice cream can be chocolate or it can be strawberry, but it’s still ice cream. The real difference, to my mind, is between romantic fiction, which all these genres are a part of, and mimetic fiction, or naturalistic fiction.

Related topics