"If by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to one sentence, this is the one I would choose: The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone."

-John McPhee

It’s an odd, although altogether common practice in life to define things by what they are not. Antimatter seems to occupy some mirror image, or negative capability in relation to observable matter. Antarctica, occupies the pole opposite to that of the Arctic. The philosophy of non-violence takes as its core tenet a refusal to conduct physical violence in pursuit of one’s aims. Likewise nonfiction is a literary genre which has developed by aiming to tell you what it’s not it’s not fiction, meaning it’s not “made up” and yet, in the past fifty years, there has been a huge blossoming of what’s been called creative nonfiction. 

So how can we draw the line between what’s creative, shaped, and molded by a writer’s hand, and what is objectively true, purporting to be nonfiction, on the other?

In fact, there are many shades of understanding to this question. Part of this will bleed into questions of legality (what happens, for example, if a writer takes liberties with the life stories and identities of actual people?) Part of this will have to be looked at as part of an ongoing evolution. Different books have different goals, and take different forms to reflect those goals. 

A longform investigative journalism piece written for a marquee magazine can certainly qualify as nonfiction, but increasingly, so can a memoir, even if a great deal of the contents are not fact-checked in the conventional way we demand a piece of journalism be. 

So what do we even mean when we use the term nonfiction? 

Well, let’s start by laying it out as plainly as possible. 

Generally speaking, these days, when we talk about nonfiction literature, we’re talking about informative writing—a deep dive into a real world subject of some kind that retains a strong authorial voice. In this sense, the author is usually not “an invisible hand” or an objective force outside the confines of the story (although this would also constitute a legitimate practice), rather the author becomes our guide through this issue, and in many cases, the author will play a direct, firsthand role in the development of the story, inserting herself into the action, shaping it, and being shaped by it in return. A great example of this would be Demon Camp by Jennifer Percy or Brothers on Three by Abraham Streep. 

Now we’ve come to that all important word: shaping. 

We might recall in our discussion of the genre of fiction that fiction derives etymologically from the Latin word fictio, meaning, quite literally, to mold or shape. When we think of fiction we tend to think of imaginative literature, an invented story with imagined characters, couched somewhere on the spectrum between the poles of realism and fantasy, and yet transmitting through the narrative some relatable modicum of truth, beauty, and wisdom—some key or insight into understanding a little bit more about who we are and what it means to be alive. 

In truth, there have been forms of nonfiction writing in the world since the moment humanity began to make records of any kind. Although, in humanity’s deep past, we might think of many of the now distinct literary genres as having been merged (mythology and history share a common ancestor in many cultures, for example, as do nonfiction and, say, mathematical tabulation) nonfiction had not yet matured and developed into anything like the genre which we now find in bookstores or at your local library. 

Many trace humanity’s earliest evidence of writing to the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia, and the development of cuneiform, where texts were written on clay tablets. In ancient China, oracle bones, used for divination ceremonies, also saw the development of what we might call proto-classical Chinese. 

These early works often documented historical events, religious beliefs, scientific observations, and philosophical ideas. Athenian General Thucydides created a major landmark in the advent of historiography in the composition of his magisterial work, History of the Peloponnesian War, in which, unlike in the work of his great forebear, Herodotus, Thucydides made it his explicit aim only to make record of those events and narratives in the war for which there was vouchsafed or verifiable evidence, thus decoupling this burgeoning genre of history from its ancient twin, mythology.  

During the Medieval period in Europe, nonfiction flourished, though it largely took the form of  theological writing and philosophy. Monastic scribes played a key role in the preservation of ancient texts and in many cases the creation of new ones. Many monasteries actually had rooms called scriptoria (singular: scriptorium) dedicated to preserving and copying manuscripts by hand; these included works of history, theology, and natural sciences. In many cases, European monasteries became storehouses for some of the treasure of the ancient world. As outlined in Stephen Greenblatt’s important Pulitzer Prize winning work of nonfiction, The Swerve, Lucretius’s seminal work De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) was recovered in one such German monastery, and the recovery of this work was a key development in the development of the Renaissance period. Renaissance is a word derived from French, meaning “re-birth,” and it alludes to the rebirth of the ideas and art of classical antiquity, which had been largely forgotten by popular culture during what are often, and somewhat erroneously, called The Dark Ages.

Other prominent nonfiction works of this era include "The History of the Church" by Eusebius of Caesarea, Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas, and "The Divine Comedy" by Dante Alighieri, which documented his religious and philosophical views.

Renaissance and Enlightenment: The Renaissance and Enlightenment periods witnessed a surge in nonfiction writing as the pursuit of knowledge and scientific inquiry gained prominence. Renowned scholars and philosophers like Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton made significant contributions to various fields of study, and their works on art, astronomy, and physics advanced the genre of nonfiction. Other notable nonfiction works of this era include "Novum Organum" by Francis Bacon, "Leviathan" by Thomas Hobbes, and "Encyclopédie" edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert.

The 18th and 19th centuries gave rise to a further taxonomy of nonfiction genres, with the codification such as subgenres as biographies, memoirs, travelogs, and non-technical scientific tracts. Key works such as The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, and On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin not only contributed to and expanded what was possible in the genre of nonfiction, but helped give rise to a culture of reading for non-specialists that was in tune with a growing middle class democratic citizenship.

A Time’s Arrow we sometimes jokingly refer to this as the myth of the general reader. 

The late 19th and early 20th centuries also saw the rise of journalism and investigative reporting, with writers like Upton Sinclair addressing social and political issues through his many pamphlets and books.

To bring us full circle, the 20th century witnessed a significant expansion of nonfiction writing, with advancements in technology, increased access to information, and the development of the modern magazine industry. Nonfiction genres such as historical narratives, biographies, self-help books, and memoirs gained widespread popularity and had begun winning literary prizes. Popular works of nonfiction such as Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, and Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari in part exemplify the diverse range of nonfiction writing even within the realm of science writing in the last few decades alone.

In recent years, nonfiction has come to mean more than simply books and articles. It has adapted to changing societal and technological trends. The genre now encompasses a wide range of formats, including podcasts and documentary films on the web, where many voices, opinions, and viewpoints can interact without the traditional gate-keeping on information that had been prevalent for time immemorial. There’s a great deal to parse through in this Chaotic, internet-driven, “Information Age” of ours, but what sits as a core tenet of nonfiction is one simple word, which I urge you to take to heart: verifiability.

Happy reading.