Is it true that nowadays nonfiction is more relevant than fiction?
Pankaj Mishra and Rivka Galchen answer the question and both their answers are dissimilar.
Mishra answers, “Even writers working within the old verities of stability and coherence — we cannot do without some of them — continue to produce persuasive fictions.”
Galchen observes, “Fiction and nonfiction do tend to deploy different methods for getting to the truth. Fiction, we have been told, tells the truth but tells it slant. It familiarizes the strange and estranges the familiar. Nonfiction aims, if not exclusively and not uncomplicatedly, for Orwell’s model of the clear pane of glass.”
Their full answers, which we recommend reading, can be found here.
