Non-fiction books make up nearly 40% of the books I’ve read so far this year. I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point over the last 10 years I’ve gone from a staunch fiction-only reader to a lover of non-fiction. I’ve enjoyed books that cross over too, such as Jackie Kay’s innovative and ambitious biography, Bessie Smith, which combines fiction and biography. As I’ve read more, I’ve developed a theory. I should at this stage caveat that there is, I don’t think, anything ground-breaking about this theory, nor is it based, I will admit, on extensive research but, with all that said, here it is.
Popular modern non-fiction is becoming increasingly dominated by the ‘my perspective on life’ essay to the detriment of traditional, heavily research-based non-fiction.
Looking across the Amazon bestsellers at the time of writing, there is a selection of ‘self-help’ books that are effectively all the same: ‘how I overcame a thing which might help you overcome a thing’. There are even books that go further, into ‘how I clean which might help you clean’, for example, or one particularly dubious looking title which appears to be an opinion piece against political correctness. This is in contrast to what feels to me a more formal type of non-fiction – history books, for example, biographies, books on science or which draw from research (I’d place books like Romanovs, Bessie Smith and Invisible Women in this category).
You don’t need research to write an opinion.
What interests me about this increase in self-help style books which are often extended, amalgamated versions of the writer’s social media pages/blog is the potential loss of accountability that brings. In a history book, or indeed in social commentary which uses data to support hypotheses, there is an expectation for assertions to backed up with data and, moreover, that those sources are cited so the reader can cross reference them if they want to understand the arguments further. Where that is missing, such as in Women Don’t Owe You Pretty, which I read earlier this year, the waters become murky. This particular book was embroiled in controversy about stolen ideas from a writer of colour, but I didn’t know that at the time of reading. What struck me though, was this was a book aimed at young women, making assertions that were unsupported by any kind of data or evidence. It was an opinion piece, written from the sole, narrow perspective of the author.
Why is this a problem? For me, it’s not in opinion pieces themselves. Opinion pieces allow us to challenge ourselves, seek different perspectives, hear different view points. Where they become problematic is when they are posed as truths, not opinions. Women Don’t Owe You Pretty is written as a feminist manifesto with no acknowledgement of the long history that led to the author being able to even write that book. And opinion without context, for me, carries less value. By contrast, I also read Failosophy this year. The difference with this, although I still wasn’t a huge fan, was that it was presented from the first page as a set of the author’s experiences and those of people she’d met. It wasn’t presented as absolute truth, but a set of things that might help someone in a similar position.
I think it is important that we can read and enjoy these books without needing citations and research. Not everyone wants to sit down and read, for example, Ron Chernow’s mammoth biography of Alexander Hamilton. However, in the current climate of falsehoods and ‘fake news’ infiltrating social media on a massive scale, I think it is worth challenging where our ‘truths’ are coming from. Just because they are written by someone famous, doesn’t make them true. For inspiration, yes. But for anything beyond interest and inspiration, I do think we need to be careful. There is a moral expectation on publishers too here, because in the spirit of ‘free speech’, you can’t police an opinion. But opinions can be toxic, and we need to protect ourselves from that.
What do you think? Is non-fiction changing or has it always been this way?
Books in Steel City x
Books in Steel City 