Fabrications

Abstract

My novel, Fabrications, is a hybrid form combining non-fiction and fiction. This blended genre could appear on the surface to be a contradiction in terms. For some critics, it is an oxymoron. Obvious questions arise such as; how can a factual or historical narrative maintain its integrity when it is written in the literary form of the novel? Does the novelisation of an actual event blur the line between fact and fiction? Is there always a definite line between fact and fiction, between the journalist and the novelist, between factuality and imagination? All hybrid literary/non-literary forms blur the lines between what is factual and what is fictional, what is historically accurate and what is fictionalised narrative. When these lines between fact and fiction are blurred, questions are asked and disagreements inevitably follow regarding this mixing of the genres. In academic, historical and strictly journalistic writing the rules are clear: no ambiguity, no assumption of knowledge, no personal or subjective intrusions. The traditional historian adheres strictly to what can be proved to be factual in any rendering of an actual historical event. The traditional journalist keeps within the parameters of the facts in any reportage of an event. My aim in this thesis is not to so much to analyse the various debates surrounding the writing of non-fiction novels but to present them as they have existed historically as a means of placing my novel, Fabrications, in the context of these debates. I also aim to further this debate. These debates have mainly existed in the public forums of writers' festivals and the like-events I have frequently attended and participated in-and in the popular press. This thesis demonstrates the way in which this debate has been somewhat circular and frustrating and so it is also the aim of this thesis to extend the debate into a new and more constructive path.

Date of Award	2010
Original language	English