by J. Nathan Matias

Artifactual Nonfiction

If we have a large corpus of digitized information, why don't we do storytelling with it? I'm not sure I know the answer to that. Perhaps people have tried. Perhaps nobody thought of it. Many online documentaries provide primary sources. For example, ExplorePaHistory.com lets readers see all the sources used to construct one of the historical articles. However, the sources are just a way to go deeper. In many cases, deeper information isn't to be found in the sources used to create an article; rather, it is found in the sources not used to create an article.

By only including the sources that agree with one argument, we wrest control of the sources from their historical context and never give the reader a chance to encounter them on the same terms we encounter our sources.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. Bibliographies do the same thing. When was the last time you read a bibliography that listed works not cited? Such a thing would be useful.

in order to do exciting things with reader agency, authors must learn to give up some of their power.

In Learn Navigation: Doing without the Narrator in Artifactual Fiction, Bill Bly tells us to ditch the narrator and the narrow-minded idea that there is a single, true story. How does he propose to do it? By writing artifactual fiction, authors give up the moral, guiding role of the narrator for the task of an organizer. Instead of imagining the world of the work, the author constructs an imagined reader, authoring a world for independent reader thoughts to play, as much as possible/desired.

Bly cites works that pretend to be the hard drive of a dead man, or a fiction that begins with an exploration of a medical report and its sources. These are all examples of entire works made of artifactual elements. But one is not limited to write always, only artifactual nonfiction. .

In Ciaran Carson's Last Night's Fun, chapter 12, most of the chapter consists of quotes and other snippets of memories and artifact. Although Carson quotes profusely, this is the only time he strings quotes together and lets the reader decide. After the chapter, he slips back into his narrated story-line, providing meaning and context to the quotes he uses.

In Artifactual fiction, the author has created the artifacts to be discovered and interpreted. Thus, the reader knows that there must be something to be found. A meaningless artifactual fiction would be cruel. But for nonfiction, plenty of artifacts exist already. With nonfiction, authors can focus much more on finding and sculpting the right modes of relation for the reader to follow.

Although I am worried about readers' willingness to enjoy artifactual fiction, I am much less worried about nonfiction. When readers encounter primary sources, they are more accustomed to the active reading required by the inclusion of primary sources.

Artifactual nonfiction need not be all primary source information. It could very feasibly include works of art and fictional elements, so long as their fictional nature were made clear. Artifactual nonfiction techniques would go a long way toward creating effective atmosphere.