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    True Stories, Well Told: From the First 20 Years of Creative Nonfiction Magazine
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    True Stories, Well Told: From the First 20 Years of Creative Nonfiction Magazine
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    True Stories, Well Told: From the First 20 Years of Creative Nonfiction Magazine
    Ebook408 pages8 hours

    True Stories, Well Told: From the First 20 Years of Creative Nonfiction Magazine

    By Susan Orlean

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Creative nonfiction is the literary equivalent of jazz: it’s a rich mix of flavors, ideas, voices, and techniquessome newly invented, and others as old as writing itself. This collection of 20 gripping, beautifully-written nonfiction narratives is as diverse as the genre Creative Nonfiction magazine has helped popularize. Contributions by Phillip Lopate, Brenda Miller, Carolyn Forche, Toi Derricotte, Lauren Slater and others draw inspiration from everything from healthcare to history, and from monarch butterflies to motherhood. Their stories shed light on how we live.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIn Fact Books
    Release dateJul 6, 2014
    ISBN9781937163174
    Unavailable
    True Stories, Well Told: From the First 20 Years of Creative Nonfiction Magazine
    Author

    Susan Orlean

    Susan Orlean has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1992. She is the New York Times bestselling author of seven books, including The Library Book, Rin Tin Tin, Saturday Night, and The Orchid Thief, which was made into the Academy Award–winning film Adaptation. She lives with her family and her animals in Los Angeles and may be reached at SusanOrlean.com and on Twitter @SusanOrlean.

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    Reviews for True Stories, Well Told

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      There are 20 pieces in this book, not including prefaces and an essay by Creative Nonfiction's founding editor, Lee Gutkind. The stories they tell and the voices they're told in vary considerably, but honesty and humanity radiate from every one of them. Stories in this collection that I particularly enjoyed were "The Wishbone", by Harrison Scott Key (a son tries to fulfill the dreams and expectations of his father), "Rachel at Work", by Jane Bernstein (an assessment of the potential for a mentally disabled daughter), and "Mrs. Kelly" by Paul Austin (a doctor makes a decision that turns out to be fatal and confronts his fallibility). I didn't know that creative nonfiction was a genre, or that there was a magazine devoted to it. I have since sought the magazine out, and expect to look for it regularly.
    • 5/5
      I love nonfiction! It is probably my favorite genre and when it is done well it is terrific. This book is done well. I had never heard of Creative Nonfiction magazine, but now I am a subscriber. True Stories, Well Told (great title) took me a while to read because I wanted to savor it. My favorites were The Butterfly Effect and Mrs. Kelly, but I really liked them all. I wish more readers would give nonfiction a chance. I belong to two book clubs and nonfiction choices always get the groans until they are read. Fiction often leads me to nonfiction to learn more on a subject and True Stories will lead me to more nonfiction about many topics.
    • 3/5
      I was happy to get a copy of "True Stories, Well Told: From the First 20 Years of Creative Nonfiction," and I expected to, wanted to, love it. But that didn't happen. I assume the stories are true and they are sort of well told. But they weren't spectacular, something I'd expect with a collection from twenty years of the best of a magazine. I'd expect that as well because of some of the big name writers included. Were these stories really the best of this magazine? Or does the person(s) who selected them have a vastly different idea of what is good than I do?The problem is that, with one exception, none of the selections emotionally engaged me. Considering that many of them dealt with such things as child abuse, a man reflecting on saving the life of a child, a doctor upset that a patient died and that doctor wanting to apologize to the man's wife, it is surprising indeed that only one touched this reader emotionally. The saddest thing is that Lee Gutkind's account of how he started the magazine is easily the most engaging piece in the book, again with one exception,, something I'd assume wasn't his intention. Brian Doyle's "Two on Two," the exception, was the piece that touched me emotionally. His account of a special time with his children is almost a prose poem. Google "His Last Game," and "Brian Doyle," and you'll come up with an amazing account of a special time between Doyle and his brother. I liked it so much I printed it out and keep it handy. I'm blown away every time I read it.
    • 4/5
      I thoroughly enjoyed this book, mostly for the reasons I read and enjoy creative nonfiction: you can learn something new. But not in the way that one can learn something new in today's front-page headlines (that's journalism, of the inverted pyramid variety, most likely), but something new told in an imaginative, three-dimensional way. That's creative nonfiction. (The title really does say it all.) Creative nonfiction is snippets of the lives and experiences of other people's we may never have otherwise encountered. It's discovering things you never new existed, like an in-depth (but not dense) history of Finland's version of baseball; or how, once a year, in Pacific Grove, CA (population: 15,522), overwintering monarch butterflies outnumber people. (See "Pesäpallo: Playing at the Edge of the World" and "The Butterfly Effect", respectively.)If you are a fan of, say, 'This American Life' on NPR, you will without a doubt enjoy this book. Not all stories will resonate with all people, but, really, that's also a little how the human experience operates.But I am, without a doubt, biased: I am a former student of creative nonfiction. More to the point, I am a product of the creative nonfiction program at the University of Pittsburgh for which Mr. Gutkind 'fist-fought', as described in his retrospective at the end of the book. I most certainly fan-girled out reading the parts describing the 5th floor of the Cathedral of Learning and Cardiac Hill, and the list mentioning his colleagues read a bit like my transcript. I had slight pangs of regret at the thought that I had chosen not to take Mr. Gutkind's writing seminar, though I suspect I would have produced for him what he calls 'obviously mediocre material'. (I do not write for a living, as my degree trained me to do, nor do I do anything close to it. But if anything, it taught me to be a lifelong reader, and, yes, a creative nonfiction nerd.)Despite my personal connection and biases, I cannot say it simply enough: Read this book, and, if you like it, support the magazine from which these stellar essays were carefully mined. I know I will.
    • 4/5
      True Stories, Well Told: From the First 20 Years of Creative Nonfiction Magazine is an anthology of work collected from the literary journal Creative Nonfiction. This book is edited by Hattie Fletcher and Lee Gutkind, the man who is considered the Godfather of creative nonfiction. As with all anthologies, there were some pieces I really enjoyed and some that didn't stay with me. I especially enjoyed the hybrid essay, "The Butterfly Effect" by Jennifer Lunden and "Rachel at Work: Enclosed, a Mother's Report" by Jane Bernstein. However, what I thought was the best part about this anthology was the introduction by Susan Orlean who outlines the problematic definitions of creative nonfiction and the "The Fine Art of Literary Fist-Fighting" by Gutkind himself. In this retrospective essay, Gutkind traces the history of his involvement in the genre and the history of the journal, Creative Nonfiction. For fans of this genre, this anthology is worth reading!
    • 4/5
      True Stories, Well Told is an anthology of stories, all apparently true written in a manner that is engaging, clear and all-in-all well written. Being a series of stories from multiple authors the part about "well told" is quite variable with some of the tales being very well-written and others not so much. One described the author's travels into Midddle Eastern nations on foot, that stayed with me, but others I felt to be a rant about various and sudry politicians. Taken as a whole most of the stories were worth reading. Without a Map by Meredith Hall is the one story that kept coming to my mind after I had read the whole book. I agree with Lee Gutkind, the editor of both this book and the magazine of Creative Non-fiction, that you know it when you read it. Creative non-fiction is in a class of it's own. I prefer non-fiction to fiction and this volume was an eye-opener. I give this anthology 4 stars
    • 4/5
      In some parts of the world, Germany say, there is not a fiction/non-fiction duality as much as a division into literature vs books-about-things. There, creative non-fiction is not such a strange genre. Here in 21st century America, it boggles our mind. This is a wonderful book, a selection of the best from Creative Nonfiction magazine. The best part may be the last, "The Fine Art of Literary Fist-Fighting, in which Lee Gutkind reprises the history of the field and of his magazine. It tells me much about literature and society in the last 20 years All the other pieces in this collection are worthwhile too. I suspect that if I were well-read, they all would be familiar to me. Some were. The others, happily, are now.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Gutkind's collection of some of the best essays from the journal, Creative Nonfiction, this is an eclectic mix of transporting essays. While all are beautifully written, the stand-outs are those which are as informative as they are personal. As a collection, the whole will appeal to any reader who wants a better feel for creative nonfiction or personal narrative essays, and also to readers who want a fast taste of many honored nonfiction writers.That said, I have to admit that I found many of these essays to be rather over-written and self-involved. In some cases, I was simply bored, and glad to be done with a given essay. More often, I did enjoy the short engagements with different worlds and different authors, but I have to say that reading this didn't make me feel more likely to pick up the journal itself. I expected a better feel for creative nonfiction, and a bit more respect for the genre, along with entertainment. We'll just say that I got some enjoyment, and some entertainment, but not nearly as much understanding or entertainment as I expected in any case. I think my nonfiction reads will continue to be lengthier reads instead of essays like this.
    • 4/5
      How much better it is for a book when you are the groundbreaker! True Stories, Well Told suffers only in comparison to the masterpiece of creative nonfiction, Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction. Had there been no TACCN, I’m quite certain True Stories would be my call for a creative nonfiction textbook. It’s very good. But it didn’t leave me breathless the way Touchstone did. True Stories. True. Well Told? Yes. Pretty well told. Just not brilliant.

      1 person found this helpful