"What I like about non-fiction is that it covers such a huge territory. The best non-fiction is also creative"
About this Quote
Kidder’s line gently redraws a border that many readers pretend is fixed: fact on one side, imagination on the other. “Non-fiction… covers such a huge territory” is less a celebration of range than a quiet argument for ambition. He’s staking a claim that the real world isn’t a narrower canvas; it’s the biggest one we have, sprawling across institutions, intimate lives, technical systems, and moral choices. If fiction can go anywhere, Kidder implies, so can reported truth, because reality contains multitudes and resistance and surprise.
The second sentence is the sharper move. Calling the best non-fiction “also creative” pushes back against the pious idea that accuracy is the opposite of artistry. Kidder’s subtext: facts don’t arrange themselves into meaning. Someone has to choose the frame, the sequence, the telling detail, the point of view that doesn’t lie but does interpret. Creativity here isn’t fabrication; it’s craft under constraint, the disciplined work of shaping chaos into narrative without breaking faith with what happened.
Context matters: Kidder is a major figure in narrative non-fiction, a tradition that rose with New Journalism and matured into today’s prestige longform ecosystem. His career sits inside an ongoing cultural fight about trust, voice, and “storytelling” in reportage. The intent is a defense of non-fiction as literature - and a warning. The closer non-fiction gets to art, the more responsibility it carries to prove it earned its beauty.
The second sentence is the sharper move. Calling the best non-fiction “also creative” pushes back against the pious idea that accuracy is the opposite of artistry. Kidder’s subtext: facts don’t arrange themselves into meaning. Someone has to choose the frame, the sequence, the telling detail, the point of view that doesn’t lie but does interpret. Creativity here isn’t fabrication; it’s craft under constraint, the disciplined work of shaping chaos into narrative without breaking faith with what happened.
Context matters: Kidder is a major figure in narrative non-fiction, a tradition that rose with New Journalism and matured into today’s prestige longform ecosystem. His career sits inside an ongoing cultural fight about trust, voice, and “storytelling” in reportage. The intent is a defense of non-fiction as literature - and a warning. The closer non-fiction gets to art, the more responsibility it carries to prove it earned its beauty.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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