How does John Herseys “Hiroshima” or Oscar Lewiss “Children of Sanchex” compare with “the nonfiction novel”?
The Oscar Lewis book is a documentary, a job of editing from tapes, and however skillful and moving, it is not creative writing. “Hiroshima” is creative – in the sense that Hersey isn’t taking something off a tape-recorder and editing it – but it still hasn’t got anything to do with what I’m talking about. “Hiroshima” is a strict classical journalistic piece. What is closer is what Lillian Ross did with “Picture.” Or my own book, “The Muses Are Heard” – which uses the techniques of the comic short novel. It was natural that I should progress from that experiment, and get myself in much deeper water. I read in the paper the other day that I had been quoted as saying that reporting is now more interesting than fiction. Now that’s not what I said, and it’s important to me to get this straight. What I think is that reporting can be made as interesting as fiction, and done as artistically – underlining those two “as”es. I don’t mean to say that one is a superior form to the other. I feel th
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