The Case Against Faction

"Faction" is a hybrid genre, aiming at the factual accuracy of journalism on the one hand and the literary form of the novel on the other. There is a fundamental tension however between those two aims, given the constraints which factual accuracy places on characterization, plot, and thematic exploration characteristic of the novel. Further, faction cannot be defended on the grounds that factual accuracy is a literary value in faction. Finally, some aspects of faction, such as its inability to refer to sources or provide an analytic framework for a narrative, hinder rather than facilitate the communication of facts.