Customer Reviews

The Truth of the Matter: Art and Craft in Creative Nonfiction

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I've used this book twice now in a 300-level undergraduate introduction to narrative nonfiction and it is a complete textbook that can stand alone or be paired with supplemental anthologies, depending on the instructor's focus. The Truth of the Matter is uniquely suitable for teaching nonfiction writing in both English creative writing sequences and in journalism programs interested in joining the nonfiction narrative revolution.

Dinty Moore devotes first third to explaining the genre and its building blocks. Beginning and intermediate writers find these concise chapters valuable for giving them just what they need to craft personal essays, memoirs, and literary journalism. Moore shows the difference between standard "just the facts" reportage and the deeper narrative nonfiction that graces literary journals and magazines such as The New Yorker. There's also an astute discussion of structure, including of such innovative forms as collage and braided essays, with examples of them included in the anthology section.

As a former journalist turned essayist and memoir writer, I loved the inclusion of Tracy Kidder's trenchant "Making the Truth Believable," in which Kidder explains his fidelity to external reality and shows how choosing the wrong point of view can lead a writer into dishonesty. As a strict constructionist myself--the creativity is in the discovery of truth and in its presentation; you don't make things up--I appreciate this as well as Moore's own emphasis throughout on honesty.

The book's anthology includes four conemporary concise essays and such classic conventional-length essays as "Notes of a Native Son" by James Baldwin; "The Courage of Turtles" by Edward Hoagland; and "The Search for Marvin Gardens" by John McPhee. Great contemporary essays that give students access to their own material include Tony Early's "Somehow Form a Family"; Philip Gerard's "What They Don't Tell You About Hurricanes"; Lucy Grealy's "Mirrorings"; and Terry Tempest Williams's "The Clan of One-Breasted Women."

I highly recommend this book for students and teachers. It is a deft guide to a popular genre that can be confusing in its variety.

Dinty Moore's The Truth of the Matter would be worth ever cent just for the anthology selections, which feature the best of the best narrative non-fiction writers. Putting down these wonderful stories is difficult but also worthwhile because the step-by-step instructions, assignments and revision techniques featured in the first part of the book are the most helpful I've ever discovered. Mr. Moore, like any good writer, is able to "show" vs. "tell" writers how to apply the techniques that matter.

I just finished teaching a seminar to high school seniors about the art of the personal essay and Dinty Moore's book was a godsend for them. He emphasizes a lot of terrific points in this book but what I focused on in my teaching was making your experiences the readers' experiences. Without using esoteric language, Moore makes his perspective on the craft of creative nonfiction easy to understand and easily applicable in the classroom. The writing exercises he provides at the end of each chapter are also highly credible and I even use them to assist my writing. I simply can't say enough good things about this book. Anyone interested in creative nonfiction, or simply creative writing, should have this on their shelves for reference.

The Truth of the Matter is a wonderful resource to have on your shelves if you plan to write any form of nonfiction, or write anything really, in the future. We used this text in my creative nonfiction workshop and it was good to reference and look through when preparing to write up essays for the class.

The book details genres of nonfiction and provides examples of strong writing and weak writing in those fields. It also provides examples of writing that blends ideas and concepts to better improve how people can approach the different areas of nonfiction.

The book arrived in time for semester start. I have not read the book because it is a textbook for my daughter.