In which Slate’s Dan Kois helps illuminate (perhaps without fully realizing it) how “creative nonfiction” has gotten ridiculously out of hand. I first learned of this D’Agata-Fingal square-off in Harper’s. The bad faith and short-sightedness of D’Agata and his ilk are pretty dreadful, I think, and the conceptual value to be gained through pursuing their agenda of “aesthetic truth” is pretty thin stuff. But reading how D’Agata bullies, insults, and abuses his fact-checker in these pieces is appalling. Of course, this presumes that the whole exchange isn’t just made up, and thus a complete waste of time.
