Investigating  the  Ethics  of  Creative  Non-­‐Fiction  Ivy  Roberts  November  18,  2013      

In  The  Lifespan  of  a  Fact,  author  John  D’Agata  and  fact  checker  Jim  Fingal  duke  out  

the  ethical  and  creative  dimensions  of  altering  details  in  a  work  of  literary  creative  

nonfiction.  The  process  was  said  to  have  lasted  seven  years,  in  which  time  Fingal  

quantitatively  assessed  the  reality  portrayed  in  the  essay  against  objective  real  world  facts.  

Fingal  highlights  numerous  passages  in  D’Agata’s  essay  in  which  the  author  manipulates  

the  facts  of  the  story  in  order  to  enhance  the  literary  dimension  of  the  prose.  In  some  cases,  

the  author  makes  up  details  in  order  to  provide  a  prettier  picture.  Fingal  notes  these  

passages  in  order  to  raise  the  question  of  veracity  and  trustworthiness  between  the  

reader’s  sense  of  reality  and  the  author’s  intention  of  creating  a  fully  formed  literary  

interpretation  of  a  real  event.  The  Lifespan  of  a  Fact  raises  questions  such  as:  

• What  are  the  ethical  dimensions  involved  in  “taking  liberties”  with  stated  facts  in  a  journalistic  piece?    

• Does  creative  nonfiction  as  a  genre  present  an  ethical  dilemma  to  the  author  in  his  or  her  representation  of  reality,  event,  or  identity?  

• What  is  the  difference  between  “taking  liberties”  and  plagiarism?    In  2003,  John  D’Agata  submitted  an  essay  to  the  magazine  The  Believer,  which  

chronicled  the  suicide  of  a  Las  Vegas  adolescent  named  Levi  Presley.  Jim  Fingal  was  

assigned  to  fact  check  the  article.  The  article,  entitled  “What  Happened  There,”  was  

eventually  published  in  2010,  but  in  the  intervening  years  D’Agata  and  Fingal  debated  

furiously  over  the  legal,  ethical,  and  creative  issues  surrounding  the  treatment  of  facts  in  

the  work.  These  communications  were  published  in  2012,  alongside  the  essay,  in  The  

Lifespan  of  a  Fact.    

In  the  course  of  communications,  it  becomes  clear  that  D’Agata’s  intention  was  to  

paint  a  picture  of  what  it  was  like  on  the  night  of  Presley’s  suicide  in  Las  Vegas.  Does  it  

matter  if  the  picture  is  pretty?  Fingal  would  say  no.  D’Agata  was  trying  to  impress  an  image  

and  a  feeling  for  the  story  in  the  reader,  not  convey  a  true  tale  about  Presley.  The  author’s  

literary  style  (creative  nonfiction)  stands  in  for  the  realism  of  an  otherwise  truthful  

objective  journalism.    

Changing  the  details  also  changes  the  reader’s  perception  of  the  world,  of  truth.  In  

the  story  that  purports  to  be  non-­‐fiction,  the  writer  took  liberties  with  the  details.  Altering  

the  facts  changes  the  meaning  of  the  story.  

On  numerous  occasions,  D’Agata  raises  the  question  of  who  is  being  harmed  by  the  

alteration  of  details.  He  claims  that  readers  don’t  receive  the  proper  amount  of  interpretive  

credit  from  an  industry  that  places  importance  in  accuracy  and  verifiability.  D’Agata’s  

perspective  can  be  supported  by  historical  representations  of  readers,  such  as  Robert  

Darnton’s  study  of  libellistes  in  18th  century  Paris:  

It  was  the  reader’s  job  to  sift  the  truth  from  the  rumors.  The  author  said  so  with  his  usual  effrontery  in  a  preface:  ‘I  must  warn  the  public  that  some  of  the  news  items  that  I  present  as  true  are  for  the  most  probably  and  that  among  them  some  are  to  be  found  whose  falseness  is  obvious.  I  don’t  take  it  upon  myself  to  sort  them  out:  it  is  up  to  people  in  high  society,  who  know  about  truth  and  lies  (from  their  frequent  use  of  both)  to  judge  and  make  a  choice’  (17).    

While  D’Agata  raises  historical  perspective  in  his  argument  on  multiple  occasions,  he  does  

not  consider  that  the  contemporary  reading  public  will  be  largely  blind  to  the  historical  

situation  of  the  literary  non-­‐fiction,  much  less  the  discourse  of  authorship.  It  becomes  

Fingal’s  role  to  mediate  between  D’Agata  and  his  intended  readership  in  situating  the  

author’s  representation  of  reality  in  a  frame  that  will  not  violate  the  reader’s  sense  

fiction/non-­‐fiction.  

In  their  communications,  D’Agata  often  references  the  historical  mode  of  writing  in  

which  he  identifies:  the  essay.  His  claims  are  supported  by  uncovering  the  history  of  news  

in  a  discourse  that  treats  facts  and  fictions  with  equal  credibility.  Lennard  Davis,  for  

example,  discusses  the  news/novels  discourse  in  Factual  Fictions:  The  Origins  of  the  English  

Novel.  Davis  traces  the  history  of  the  distinction  between  news  and  literature  back  to  16th  

century  London.  In  the  16th  century,  readers  did  not  make  the  same  distinction  between  

news  and  fiction  that  we  do  today,  nor  were  readers  perceived  to  have  the  same  kind  of  

agency  and  interpretive  faculty  as  Darnton  describes  in  his  study  of  literature  in  18th  

century  Paris.    Davis  describes  that  the  distinction  between  fiction  and  nonfiction  simply  

did  not  exist:  “Many  of  the  readers  knew  that  their  newes  was  not  trewe  and  did  not  think  

that  fact  was  very  significant.  To  say  simply  that  readers  were  gullible  fails  to  explain  the  

obsession  with  treweness  or  neweness  and  fails  to  answer  the  question  of  why  these  

qualities  became  desirable  ones  for  balladeers  to  boast  about”  (54).  The  distinction  

between  fiction  and  nonfiction  did  not  come  about  until  centuries  later  when  genres  

became  more  solidified.  Still,  as  is  apparent  from  the  history  of  creative  nonfiction,  the  

genre  has  more  to  do  with  its  definition  of  its  audience  than  its  definition  of  literature.    

The  ethical  dilemma  of  altering  details  in  a  nonfiction  essay  also  bears  relation  to  

the  Letham’s  “The  Ecstasy  of  Influence”  and  Shields’  Reality  Hunger.  Letham  and  Shields  

specifically  raise  the  questions  of  authorship  and  attribution  in  their  work.  Contemporary  

law  and  academic  culture  reproduce  the  conception  that  plagiarism  is  on  the  wrong  side  of  

the  ethical  divide;  it  assumes  a  writer  has  failed  to  attribute  the  source  of  a  product  of  

intellectual  property  (stealing).  Such  a  conception  relies  on  notion  of  the  romantic  author  

and  the  work  as  the  expression  of  unique  individual  genius.  Interestingly,  Sheilds’  

manuscript  version  of  Reality  Hunger  did  not  include  a  key/index  until  the  publisher  

stepped  in,  arguing  that  the  attribution  was  required  to  protect  against  legal  disputes.  

Shields  accepted  the  intervention,  and  the  work  was  published  with  an  index  –  though  the  

index  appears  with  an  author’s  statement  suggesting  that  readers  “cut  along  the  dotted  

lines”  in  order  to  remove  the  section  from  the  binding.  Shields  and  D’Agata  are  blood  

brothers.  

The  ethical  dilemma  in  The  Lifespan  of  a  Fact  involves  a  similar  issue  concerning  

attribution,  but  not  a  proprietary  one.  No  one  owns  the  facts;  D’Agata’s  liberties  were  not  

infringing  on  anyone  else’s  intellectual  property.  He  only  failed  to  produce  the  attributions  

(which  belonged  to  his  imagination).    

John:  I’m  building  an  image,  Jim.  Jim:  An  image  based  on  what?  Your  imagination?  (85).    As  a  fact  checker,  it  was  Fingal’s  job  to  support  a  claim  that  the  facts  represented  in  

the  essay  were  verifiable  and  accurate.  Changing  the  name  of  a  source  to  protect  their  

identity  is  one  thing;  changing  the  statistics  of  a  scientific  study  is  quite  another.  Fingal’s  

approach  to  fact  checking  appears  at  times  in  The  Lifespan  of  a  Fact  as  overly  literal.  He  

comes  across  as  a  disciple  at  the  altar  of  science,  obsessed  with  arguing  as  to  whether  the  

description  of  a  statistic  is  off  by  a  fraction  of  a  percent.  To  be  completely  factually,  Fingal  

suggests  changing  the  following  phrasing:  

“For  every  five  new  residents  who  move  to  Las  Vegas,  three  natives  move  out.”  

“For  every  five  new  residents  who  move  to  Las  Vegas,  three  and  one-­‐third  residents  

move  out”  (33).  

When  quoting  a  statement,  Fingal  suggests  to  D’Agata  to  include  brackets  to  indicate  

the  change  of  case.  D’Agata  refuses  the  change,  arguing  that  such  an  inclusion  would  ruin  

the  flow  of  text  and  the  aesthetic  of  the  page  (57).  It’s  easy  to  side  with  Fingal  on  this  one;  

such  an  alteration  is  practically  equivalent  to  misquotation  in  the  eyes  of  contemporary  

citation  standards.  When  citing  statistics  on  suicide  and  population,  Fingal  is  also  in  the  

right  (52).  It  is  unethical  to  change  basic  statistical  fact  in  order  to  drive  home  a  point  about  

the  aesthetics  of  literature.      

Where  D’Agata’s  message  of  taking  liberties  with  the  facts  becomes  most  convincing,  

his  arguments  do  not  have  to  do  with  numbers  or  scholarly  standards  of  attribution.  It  

seems  that  one  of  his  underlying  intentions  in  altering  details  was  to  create  an  atmosphere  

to  make  it  seem  that  the  world  played  a  role  in  bringing  Presley  to  commit  suicide.  From  a  

bird’s  eye  perspective,  I  agree  with  D’Agata’s  intention  to  represent  a  real  place  and  

character  through  a  literary  lens.  However,  at  times  his  tactics  step  over  the  line  of  ethical  

standards  into  an  area  where  fact  trumps  poetry.  

Fingal  and  D’Agata  have  conflicting  interpretations  of  truth,  both  of  which  are  

equally  valid  and  reasoned  in  their  email  correspondence.  Their  perspectives  are  so  

different  that  they  come  to  represent  two  separate  and  conflicting  worldviews.  D’Agata  

represents  the  literary,  intuitive  reader  who  values  emotional  impact  over  the  degree  to  

which  the  story  reflects  the  real  world.  Fingal,  on  the  other  hand,  represents  the  reader  

who  values  the  truth  above  all  –  the  objective,  verifiable,  raw  data  that  stands  for  itself.  

These  two  perspectives  neither  overlap  nor  compromise.  It’s  either  or.    

   

Bibliography:    D’Agata,  John  and  Jim  Fignal.  The  Lifespan  of  a  Fact.  New  York:  W.  W.  Norton  &  Company,  

2012.  Darnton,  Robert.  Devil  in  the  Holy  Water,  or  the  Art  of  Slander  from  Louis  XIV  to  Napoleon.  

Philadephia:  University  of  Pennsylvania  Press,  2009.  Davis,  Lennard.  Factual  Fictions:  The  Origins  of  the  English  Novel.  NY:  Columbia  University  

Press,  1983.  Hartsock,  John.  A  History  of  Literary  Journalism:  The  Emergence  of  a  Modern  Narrative  Form.  

Amherst:  University  of  Massachusetts  Press,  2000.  Letham,  “The  Ecstacy  of  Influence:  A  Plagiarism.”  Harpers  Feb.  2000:  59-­‐71.  Shields,  David.  Reality  Hunger:  A  Manifesto.  NY:  Vintage,  2011.