Talk:Non-fiction novel

Comments
This whole thing is very sloppily written. I'm going to come back to it later and edit it when i get a chance because it reads like a high school essay.142.1.228.145 (talk) 14:03, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

The nonfiction doesn't start with In cold blood. Starts with Operación masacre (1957) de Rodolfo Walsh, 9 years before Capote's book. Someone with a better knowledge of English than me would make the change in the article? Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.255.46.226 (talk) 02:44, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

As a Norwegian, so would I say (and many like me here in Norway) that a Norwegian author named Gunnar Larsen was the first author who wrote the first nonfiction novel in 1933. The novel are called To mistenkelige personer (English title would be something like Two suspicious men/Two suspicious persons) and novel are based on a true story that happen I Norway in 1926. The case of ”Lensmannsmordene” (“the policemen’s murders”) is one of the most noted crime cases in Norwegian history. Even a movie has been made after this book in 1950, but illegal between 1952 to 1998 because one of the murders did still lived during that period. - A Norwegian dude


 * Ok, but this article states that the genre was not recognized until 1965, which is true, as Capote spent much of his time emphasizing the breakthrough of his nonfiction novel. Note that the article spends nearly half its tiny space describing other arguable cases of nonfiction novelism, which were nonetheless not considered such at the time.  It is also undeniable that nonfiction noveloids were extremely rare before In Cold Blood, and far more popular afterwards.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Eebster the Great (talk • contribs) 02:32, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

'The Devils of Loudun' by Huxley (1952)? I feel a proper history of the concept should be established in this article.81.141.204.43 (talk) 23:40, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Proposed merger from Faction
"Faction" seems to me to be another term for the same idea. --Paul Foxworthy (talk) 00:48, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

How is Keroauc's "On the Road" not mentioned in this entry? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.47.99.50 (talk) 19:02, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Because Kerouac published it as fiction, and he indeed fictionalized his experiences. If you cite Kerouac as "non-fiction novel" for those reasons, you'd have to include Dickens' David Copperfield, which also draws on the author's biographically verifiable experiences.Theonemacduff (talk) 04:39, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

A mess
This article is a mess, and one reason is that it mixes up faction with non-fiction novel. The two are quite different, and merging them together results in a disjointed article that zips back and forth between the two without ever establishing valid reasons for doing so. Now, you might want to write an article for an academic journal that argues the case that they are two terms for the same thing, but in terms of genre criticism, nobody that I'm aware of has done that article, or has even contemplated it. As for the so-called "first claims," there are too many conflicting ones, and in any case, as another contributor has said, nobody at the time those predecessors published regarded them as such; the claims are totally retrospective, thus, unfounded in terms of the category itself, which first emerges into the light of day with Capote's explicit claims. And btw, the section on Capote looks like the writer's original literary criticism, and should be re-written; after all, this is an encyclopedia, not a critical journal. I would recommend paring the article back to the bare minimum. Delete faction material; cite Capote and his claim; and Mailer, who wrote a number of other books that bid fair to be called such, e.g., Of a Fire on the Moon, The Executioner's Song, Oswald: An American Mystery; a brief section on other examples that preceded these two with an explanation why they are not originators; and a quick section charting the use of the concept by later writers. But the faction stuff has to go; it isn't germane.Theonemacduff (talk) 04:37, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Need more information / comparison
Having read this article, I don't feel like the nuances that differentiate a non-fiction novel from other non-fiction works is explained.

One of my favorite non-fiction works is Helter Skelter. Does it qualify as a non-fiction novel? In what way does it not? Is it merely that most of the text is written in the first person (though it should be noted that a significant chunk of the beginning of the book is not)?

Nsayer (talk) 21:00, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Since when is nonfiction hyphenated?
My Merriam-Webster's doesn't. – AndyFielding (talk) 10:50, 9 August 2021 (UTC)
 * It tends to be hyphenated in British English, e.g. as here. Jock123A (talk) 22:39, 23 November 2021 (UTC)