An autobiographical novel, also known as a autobiographical fiction, fictional autobiography, or autobiographical fiction novel, is a type of novel which uses autofiction techniques, or the merging of autobiographical and fictive elements. The literary technique is distinguished from a typical autobiography or memoir by being a work of fiction presented in the same fashion as a typical non-fiction autobiography by "imitating the conventions of an autobiography."
In Cold Blood is a non-fiction novel by the American author Truman Capote, first published in 1966. It details the 1959 murders of four members of the Clutter family in the small farming community of Holcomb, Kansas.
Docudrama is a genre of television and film, which features dramatized re-enactments of actual events. It is described as a hybrid of documentary and drama and "a fact-based representation of real event".
Creative nonfiction is a genre of writing that uses literary styles and techniques to create factually accurate narratives. Creative nonfiction contrasts with other non-fiction, such as academic or technical writing or journalism, which are also rooted in accurate fact though not written to entertain based on prose style. Many writers view creative nonfiction as overlapping with the essay.
True crime is a nonfiction literary, podcast, and film genre in which the author examines a crime and details the actions of people associated with and affected by criminal events. It is a cultural phenomenon that can refer to the promotion of sensationalized and emotionally charged content around the subject of violent crime, for the general public. Many works in this genre recount high-profile, sensational crimes such as the killing of JonBenét Ramsey, the O. J. Simpson murder case, and the Pamela Smart murder, while others are devoted to more obscure slayings.
In literature, film, and other such arts, an unreliable narrator is a narrator who cannot be trusted, one whose credibility is compromised. They can be found in fiction and film, and range from children to mature characters. While unreliable narrators are almost by definition first-person narrators, arguments have been made for the existence of unreliable second- and third-person narrators, especially within the context of film and television, but sometimes also in literature.
Postmodern literature is a form of literature that is characterized by the use of metafiction, unreliable narration, self-reflexivity, intertextuality, and which often thematizes both historical and political issues. This style of experimental literature emerged strongly in the United States in the 1960s through the writings of authors such as Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis, Philip K. Dick, Kathy Acker, and John Barth. Postmodernists often challenge authorities, which has been seen as a symptom of the fact that this style of literature first emerged in the context of political tendencies in the 1960s. This inspiration is, among other things, seen through how postmodern literature is highly self-reflexive about the political issues it speaks to.
New Journalism is a style of news writing and journalism, developed in the 1960s and 1970s, that uses literary techniques unconventional at the time. It is characterized by a subjective perspective, a literary style reminiscent of long-form non-fiction. Using extensive imagery, reporters interpolate subjective language within facts whilst immersing themselves in the stories as they reported and wrote them. In traditional journalism, the journalist is "invisible"; facts are meant to be reported objectively.
Meyer Levin was an American novelist. Perhaps best known for his work on the Leopold and Loeb case, Levin worked as a journalist.
A book series is a sequence of books having certain characteristics in common that are formally identified together as a group. Book series can be organized in different ways, such as written by the same author, or marketed as a group by their publisher.
The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel/The Novel as History is a nonfiction novel recounting the October 1967 March on the Pentagon written by Norman Mailer and published by New American Library in 1968. It won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and the National Book Award in category Arts and Letters. Mailer's unique rendition of the nonfiction novel was perhaps his most successful example of new journalism, and received the most critical attention. The book originated as an essay published in Harper's Magazine titled "The Steps of the Pentagon," at the time the longest magazine article ever published, surpassing John Hersey's "Hiroshima" in The New Yorker.
African American literature is the body of literature produced in the United States by writers of African descent. It begins with the works of such late 18th-century writers as Phillis Wheatley. Before the high point of enslaved people narratives, African American literature was dominated by autobiographical spiritual narratives. The genre known as slave narratives in the 19th century were accounts by people who had generally escaped from slavery, about their journeys to freedom and ways they claimed their lives. The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s was a great period of flowering in literature and the arts, influenced both by writers who came North in the Great Migration and those who were immigrants from Jamaica and other Caribbean islands. African American writers have been recognized by the highest awards, including the Nobel Prize given to Toni Morrison in 1993. Among the themes and issues explored in this literature are the role of African Americans within the larger American society, African American culture, racism, slavery, and social equality. African-American writing has tended to incorporate oral forms, such as spirituals, sermons, gospel music, blues, or rap.
Thomas Mallon is an American novelist, essayist, and critic. His novels are renowned for their attention to historical detail and context and for the author's crisp wit and interest in the "bystanders" to larger historical events. He is the author of ten books of fiction, including Henry and Clara, Two Moons, Dewey Defeats Truman, Aurora 7, Bandbox, Fellow Travelers, Watergate, Finale, Landfall, and most recently Up With the Sun. He has also published nonfiction on plagiarism, diaries, letters and the Kennedy assassination, as well as two volumes of essays.
Narrative journalism, also referred to as literary journalism, is defined as creative nonfiction that contains accurate, well-researched information. It is related to immersion journalism, where a writer follows a subject or theme for a long period of time and details an individual's experiences from a deeply personal perspective.
The New Journalism is a 1973 anthology of journalism edited by Tom Wolfe and E. W. Johnson. The book is both a manifesto for a new type of journalism by Wolfe, and a collection of examples of New Journalism by American writers, covering a variety of subjects from the frivolous to the deadly serious. The pieces are notable because they do not conform to the standard dispassionate and even-handed model of journalism. Rather they incorporate literary devices usually only found in fictional works.
Autofiction is, in literary criticism, a form of fictionalized autobiography.
Verisimilitude is the "lifelikeness" or believability of a work of fiction. The word comes from Latin: verum meaning truth and similis meaning similar. Language philosopher Steve Neale distinguishes between two types: cultural verisimilitude, meaning plausibility of the fictional work within the cultural and/or historical context of the real world, outside of the work; and generic verisimilitude, meaning plausibility of a fictional work within the bounds of its own genre.
Operación Masacre is a nonfiction novel of investigative journalism, written by noted Argentine journalist and author Rodolfo Walsh. It is considered by some to be the first of its genre. It was published in 1957, nine years before the publication of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, a book often credited as the first major nonfiction novel of investigative journalism.
"A Diamond Guitar" is a short story by Truman Capote, first published in Harper's Bazaar in 1950; it is noted as one of his better quality early short stories. The title refers to the prize possession of the younger man, a rhinestone-studded guitar; the guitar serves as the key image of the story.
