Blog Post 7

To me a good story is a good story no matter what genre it is. If it’s fiction or nonfiction, it doesn’t matter as long as it’s entertaining and meaningful.  I’ve read plenty of fiction novels and memoirs to conclude that they are basically the same thing. Both genres are written by an author who’s just trying to pass on a story, true or not. That’s why I think that the line between fiction and memoirs should be discarded.

When I read A Million Little Pieces by James Frey, I was fascinated with his story. All the things he went through were crazy and tough. But when I found out that some of what he had written was false, it didn’t bother me. I didn’t care that part of his story didn’t happen, that he had made it up. To me, James’s story was just that: a story. While I was reading it, I never took it as complete truth. I just read it like I would any other book; as a piece of literature that was entertaining and controversial. Which is the way I think it should be read. If there wasn’t a line between fiction in memoirs then maybe people would read books this way. You wouldn’t expect everything to be true in a memoir, and authors wouldn’t have to categorize their writing in a set genre. They would be able to be creative and experiment with their stories. Without set the set genres, then people would be more open to new books they wouldn’t have read before.