Too Much Fact in Fiction
After reading John Banville’s Booker prize-winning The Sea, a slim volume trumpeted as fiction, I was startled to discover, upon finishing the book and perusing my hefty atlas, that this supposedly fantastical place named Ireland was, in fact, an actual island due north. While reading the book, I thought the place sounded familiar, yet I let it slide, not wanting niggling particulars to ruin the fiction experience.
Done with the novel, and stunned by my discovery of Ireland, I was gradually unsettled by other suspicions: What if the main character, this Max Morden, was an actual person. I explored the online phone book of Ireland and came up with four individuals bearing the name Maxwell Morden. Feeling more greatly duped, I telephoned the first three Maxwells on my list and demanded to know on what ground each stood. Yet despite my repeated harassment, neither of these Maxwell Morden’s would concede to being fictional.
Of the four Maxwells, I only managed to receive answers at three. The line was not picked up at the fourth. Aha, I thought, now I might be getting somewhere. Perhaps this one was the fictional character. Throughout the day, I keep ringing, yet, my efforts went unrewarded. Two days later, the line was disconnected, the sound of the recorded voice not bothering me so much as placating me. Perhaps Mr. Banville might have been writing fiction after all, I consolingly told myself.
After a page-by-page analysis of The Sea, which turned up a virtual plethora of verifiable facts, I believe a comprehensive investigation of the book is in order. And if the sanctioned percentage of fact (to be determined by James Frey) exceeds the appropriate percentage of fiction (again, to be determined by James Frey), then I suggest it would be prudent for the Booker Prize committee to strip Banville of his award. After all, isn’t the book an award for fiction? Fact has no place in it.
As one might imagine, this eye-opening revelation hurled me into further thought. Prior to reading Banville’s volume, I had read JM Coetzee’s book Youth. On its back cover the label of fiction was clearly applied, yet according to the information dispatched to me by hired investigators who specialize in these literary inquests (a budding and lucrative branch that appears to be taking off), most of these occurrences actually happened to Mr. Coetzee. And yet here he was shamelessly pawning it off as fiction. The nerve of the man! How could a reader be anything but indignant to the point of weary disillusionment?
Even works of more wild imagination, ones that should aptly be entitled to the stamp of fiction, works by Ray Bradbury or JRR Tolkien, have actual people in them, humans with teeth and hair (are fictional characters permitted to have teeth or is that too concrete an attribute). Should not fictional characters be of complete invention and speak a language that no one might understand, exist in realms that are nonsensical and, in fact, not exist in book form at all?
How can a book be accurately called a work of fiction if it is created in book form. Should not the fictional book form be something else entirely, such as a car or a piece of bologna?
"Here is my new book," a fictional author might say, handing a potential reader a piece of bologna. "It’s my new work of fiction."
In keeping with these stalwart principals, should not an author of fiction be fictional himself? Why should a writer, who spends his lifetime claiming that what he creates is entirely invented, be permitted to use his actual name or live in a real house, for the matter? Doesn’t that immediately cast a shadow of doubt over the entire undertaking? When writing a novel, shouldn’t the author be so attuned to his profession as to choose the name of his dog or the name of a rock to print on the cover.
Of course, this feeling of being cheated and of violation and abuse to my very soul, where the literary spirit lies helplessly dumb, led me to contact my lawyer who is currently engaged in writing up a class action suit against authors who have deceptively (and without an ounce of concern for the discord they have unleashed) misstated fact for fiction. Of course, I have not undertaken such an action for the money, but as a means of segregating black and white from their corruptive shades of gray.
Furthermore, I will be contacting the befitting government agencies in hopes of initiating the appointment of a hearings committee which might investigate the proliferation of fact in fiction. The ultimate goal being to have every reference to fact excised from any work labeled fiction. A laborious undertaking, no doubt, yet one that some brave soul must endure in hopes of returning the spirit of complete fabrication to the untruthful name of what we once believed to be fiction.
An earlier version of this article was published in The Times (London) and The Toronto Star
© 2025 ungorgeous.com
