Truth or Consequences: Individuality, Reference, and the Fiction/Nonfiction Distinction

Theories of the fiction/nonfiction distinction generally choose one particular measure of referentiality on which to ground their divisions. Thus nonfiction has been variously distinguished from fiction by authorial intention, genre conventions, or the ontological status of the text. However, not even the most reasonable and straightforward of such measures has compelled widespread agreement among critics on a clear-cut border. The complex reality of how humans use narrative to model experience suggests that no single formula will ever explain how different readers experience different texts, either in the moment of their consumption or afterwards in the construction of readers' views of reality. The web of ways we use narrative conventions - and are ourselves constituted by those conventions - suggests that we need to develop a more subtle and complex theory of fiction and nonfiction, and abandon the beautiful dream of a simple sorting machine.