Writer and editor …

… Truth of the Matter | The Weekly Standard. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Attempts have been made in recent years to elevate serious nonfiction, to pump it up into the realm of high literature. In their day, Norman Mailer and Truman Capote claimed to be writing nonfiction novels, by which they meant little more than that they brought a fiction writer’s sensibility, and a few of the techniques of the novel, to factual material. In some academic circles, nonfiction is referred to as “literary nonfiction,” or—man that pump: huff, puff—as “creative nonfiction,” and a magazine calledCreative Nonfiction has been in existence for nearly 20 years now. But is nonfiction in all its various subgenres sufficiently unified for a book of advice on how to write it likely to be of much value?