The other day we (a bunch of fellow mfa-ers) were chatting about creating a new term for a genre that blends the truth with fiction - you know, the same old discussion we must keep having after the Giant James Frey Incident. And now, with Dave Eggers' book What is the What, the conversation is certainly still relevant. Dave Eggers may not know it, but he is a fictiorist. This is the term that spontaneously erupted from our conversation that I feel very proud of, and no doubt, surely, someone out there has already coined it.
So what is a fictiorist? And how do you say it? Well, firstly, with attitude. But for those who want the phonetics of the word: fick-shwar-ist. I liken it to Amy Lowell being coined an 'imagiste' but without the fanfare. A fictiorist is a writer of fictoir: fiction + memoir, in which the rules and expectations of truth are bent to create a wholly pleasing and mostly accurate account that may or may not be true, depending on what tenets of truth the fictiorist deems important.
I feel a sort of lawyerly litigation lust coming out here. Think of the loopholes! The contracts! The lawsuits!
It is truly rife with possibility.
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