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Surfing in Hawaii: Jack London's creative nonfiction.(Special Feature)

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From: Writing!
Date: 20030901
Author:Gourley, Catherine

Creative nonfiction is not new. American authors have produced this kind of writing for more than 150 years.

In the 1800s, Mark Twain, Henry David Thoreau, and others wrote what was called "literary journalism." In the 1900s, such writers as John Hersey and Truman Capote wrote imaginatively about real events. Hersey's Hiroshima, for example, explored the atomic bombing of Japan that ended World War II. Capote's In Cold Blood investigated the 1959 murder of a Kansas family.

One famous writer who used the techniques of the novel to describe real events was Jack London. This ...

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