Literary Blog Hop: Is there such a thing as literary nonfiction?

...Is there!? And how, I say! I, however, am a fan of bending the term "nonfiction." To some extent, I would almost say that poetry can be considered nonfiction-- especially haiku or other nature-focused poetry. Let's have a look-see at my super crush, old W.B:

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.



...Siiigh. Oh, Yeats. Here he is, talking to us about the peace and quiet of his beautiful spot overlooking the beautiful isle (fun fact: my parents' first sailboat was called Innisfree. Fun fact 2: I have a self-taken picture of said isle somewhere in a box; I'll have to dig that out)....

how is this not nonfiction? If the definition of nonfiction is simply Truth, then I daresay this is very much literary nonfiction.



To be slightly less definition-bending with my answer, then my answer is still yes. How about Under the Tuscan Sun? How about travelogues in general? Pete McCarthy's awesome book McCarthy's Bar is humorous to be sure, but that makes it no less literary: he's soul-searching, and isn't that what literary-ness (yes, that's a word) is all about? And that book is surely considered nonfiction.




What about books on writing? Lamott's Bird by Bird, Berg's Escaping into the Open, even Wood's How Fiction Works. I would call these literary nonfiction, too: they're beautifully written, they inspire-- literary for sure! And also, definitely nonfiction.


Hear ye, hear ye: yes! there IS such a thing as literary nonfiction!