Dinty Moore is the editor of BREVITY, the online journal of short creative nonfiction. He’s also the author of Between Panic and Desire (American Lives). He shares his photos via flickr, and for today’s Nonficitionst, he discusses the merits of short writing, the spectrum of CNF, and more. Please, enjoy!

What can be accomplished through very short essays like those at Brevity that isn’t accomplished or just isn’t the focus in longer forms?

I would be reluctant to say that a writer can’t accomplish something in the longer form essay that she can in the very brief form, or vice versa, because there is always some writer who will prove me wrong.  But I will suggest that the short form, when done well, offers a compression of experience, a distillation of the moment, that is more like the haiku or poem than it is like the longer, thoughtful memoir or essay.  I think certain experiments, with language, point-of-view, structure, work better in the short form.  Very brief essays are like a petri dish for innovation.

I’m interested in the vast variety of work that we call creative nonfiction. How can the lyrical, image-oriented essays at Brevity be part of the same genre as more journalistic works?

This seems to flummox everyone, honestly.  Lately I’ve been hearing a number of writers/teachers of the form ask, in frustration, “Can we talk more about how to write the genre well and less about how to define it?”   The outer parameters you set — the lyric, almost ethereal essay as opposed to the highly journalistic ‘article’ –   are both nonfiction, and nonfiction that allows creative choices on the part of the author, so they both qualify, as does everything in between.  But fiction has this range as well;:fiction includes the child’s board book and the highly formulaic western, and all of the literary genres and sub-genres, including the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Italo Calvino.   That’s a bit of a spectrum as well.
You also write fiction — how do the two types of writing influence each other for you? What types of stories need to be written as nonfiction, and what stories need to be fictionalized?

I started my literary career writing fiction, and so my early nonfiction was highly influenced by the short story arc and frame.  I strove for scene and dialogue and detail that seemed “short story-like”.  Lately I’ve been learning more about other corners of the nonfiction genre, from Montaigne to Virginia Woolf to Eula Biss, and frankly, I’m excited about how much room there is to roam.  I think any story can be set as fiction or nonfiction (though of course, the nonfiction story must be limited to the honest facts, memories, and observations, and the fiction author can , and should, allow the imagination to add and enhance.)   Maybe the difference is with the author — some authors need to explore an experience, idea, or question in one mode while others need to explore it in a different mode.  Some people need to make films  Some need to weld pieces of metal one to another.  Others dance.

You’re working on a new book about the personal essay — can you tell me a bit about that?
No, it is too new.  I don’t know that much myself.  Books tend to take on lives oftheir own.

Let me just say it will (in theory, once written) celebrate the personal essay genre (Montaigne Lamb, Orwell, Didion) and show how exploration and uncertainty is the strongest engine for good writing.
What are you reading lately?
Eula Biss has a new book, Notes from No Man’s Land: American Essays, as does Brenda Miller, Blessing of the Animals.  And I’m finally getting around to reading Leila Philip’s fascinating A Family Place.

Tags: nonfictionist

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.