Recently, I received this email:

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Dear Mr. Gutkind,

Paul LaTour, staff writer
Naperville (IL) Sun

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There are actually two questions being asked here: 1) What is the difference between creative nonfiction and journalism? and 2) When writers make assumptions based on facts, can what they write still be considered factual?

1) While journalism begins with the facts—the who, what, when, etc.—creative nonfiction begins with the narrative, the story recounted in scenes. That being said, the best creative nonfiction requires an anchoring element of reportage. The facts cannot be changed or avoided.

Take for example Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, in which the reader learns a great deal about poverty and the Great Depression in the U.S. and Ireland, among other things. In various ways, Angela’s Ashes is very journalistic, as is, more recently, Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. And from the very beginning of the new journalism movement—the precursor to creative nonfiction—precedent setting work by Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe, George Plimpton and Norman Mailer demanded a high standard of information—mostly reportage, although these writers are narrative aficionados.

2) As for the Vann piece and other similar treatments (such as The Perfect Storm), it seems to me that a writer can make certain assumptions based on information and evidence he/she or others have collected.

Vann’s article is probably 10,000 words or more in length, and the only bit anyone has taken umbrage with is the first 300 words. The rest of the article makes it clear that Vann has done an incredible amount of research and conducted numerous interviews. Furthermore, we have to assume and trust that the Esquire fact-checkers have made Vann responsible for supporting his speculation with irrefutable information.

But, you’re probably asking yourself, what if they didn’t? And besides, how can Vann say what happened those last few minutes in the hotel room, if no one was there to witness it? What kind of irrefutable evidence proves that the shooter “checks himself in the mirror, walks to the door, then has to go back to check again, just to make sure”?

There are two possibilities: Esquire was a pioneer of new journalism, publishing a number of those groundbreaking early pieces, and perhaps their editors today feel like they are permitted certain liberties. After all, they seem to enjoy stirring the pot lately [there was a bit of controversy regarding another Esquire article, “The Last Days of Heath Ledger” by Lisa Taddeo—which I blogged about a few months back. The difference, however, is that Taddeo’s piece was billed as fiction.]

But the most likely possibility is that often in articles such as this one—after so much research is conducted and information collected—writers often develop such an intense closeness with their “character” that they feel like they can actually enter that person’s head. This technique is often referred to as psychoanalyzing your character, a technique that has recently gained popularity among some historical nonfiction writers (Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City is a good example).

I’ve recently compiled a book, Keep It Real: Everything You Need to Know About Researching and Writing Creative Nonfiction, which happens to have a chapter devoted to this technique (there are also chapters that cover fact-checking and getting inside characters’ heads). Here is an excerpt from “Psychoanalyzing Characters,” written by Dennis Palumbo, a therapist and an experienced creative nonfiction writer:

"Today’s nonfiction writers delve more intimately than ever into the lives and subjective experiences of the real people they depict. While this approach has always been a crucial component of the fiction writer’s art, there’s a specific danger involved when the people depicted actually exist—namely, that much of the authority behind the nonfiction writer’s voice (and opinion) derives from the reader’s belief that what’s being described is “true.”

In the end, I agree that parts of Vann’s lead is obviously speculation, and I believe that a lot of the controversy could have been avoided if he made this more explicit. But I also think, as a reader, considering the context, I know what he is saying is speculation. So if I already know, does he have to tell me?