A lyric essay should connect to readers on an intimate level, regardless of whether the facts are imaginary or real, said essay-ist John D'Agata to a nearly full MacMillan 117 Wednesday night.
"What matters is the pursuit," said D'Agata, who is also an assistant professor of English at the University of Iowa.
D'Agata is the third writer this year to come to the University as part of the Great Writers Lecture Series, sponsored by the Department of English. Elizabeth Taylor, chair of the University's expository writing program, said the lecture series highlights how academic writing intersects with more realistic writing genres like creative nonfiction.
"He is inspiring for other young writers because he himself is a young writer," Taylor said.
D'Agata began his lecture by saying, "I don't do chit-chat very well." This set the tone for the rest of the lecture, as he avoided explicitly defining the term lyric essay. For the remaining 30 minutes, D'Agata read one of his essays titled "Creative Non-arrangement."
The writer said he derived inspiration for this essay from science fiction stories and encyclopedia volumes describing various predictions for the end of the world. D'Agata also researched other scholars who imagined how the apocalypse would unfold.
During the question-and-answer period that followed, D'Agata explained that the purpose of his essay - which often took the form of a list and was full of statistics and dates - is to prove that there is no such thing as perfect objectivity in nonfiction writing.
"It is not possible to engage the world without transforming it," D'Agata said.
D'Agata also addressed the recent controversy over James Frey's memoir, "A Million Little Pieces," a nonfiction memoir that received pointed criticism after parts of it were discredited. According to D'Agata, it is illusory to think that nonfiction must always be truthful. He added that Frey fabricated parts of his memoir because the lies actually helped him to achieve an emotional truth. "The emotion of the experience meant something different than the facts," he said.
Several times throughout the lecture, D'Agata said he does not use the term nonfiction.
"It is art, so stop calling it nonfiction," he said.
Catherine Imbriglio, a lecturer in the English department, said D'Agata is concerned with looking at the essay as an art form. This semester, Imbriglio is teaching D'Agata's anthology, "The Next American Essay," as part of EL 118.6: "Creative Nonfiction: Lyricism and Lucidity." She said she finds D'Agata's work innovative because he examines the ways in which poetry can inform nonfiction.
"He's thrown out some ideas that you can pick up and run with whether you are a poet or a different type of writer," Imbriglio said.
