The Unknown Yet Inevitable

I N HER 1995 book on writing, , Anne Lamott writes, “Tell the truth as you understand it. If you’re a writer you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act—truth is always subversive.” In the past few years, literary nonfiction has had something of a renaissance, with contemporary writers? Does mean you make things up? How can you claim a story is true when you’re relying on memory—that ever fallible, unreliable narrator—to tell it? Such uncertainty is perhaps most apparent in the publishing industry. To put it plainly, books of literary nonfiction, whether essay collection or memoir, are hard to publish. First books of literary nonfiction are even harder. In the eyes of major publishers, they’re difficult to market. Which means they’re a tough sell to editors. Which means it can be hard for nonfiction writers to find an agent. What does get published, more often than not, are memoirs by celebrities and Internet personalities—books more concerned with salaciousness and salability than story or artistry. The great books of literary nonfiction that do get published are typically by writers who have at least one book, and some record of sales success, already under their belt.