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Reviews Thu Sep 24 2009
Travel Writing Review & Peter Ferry Interview
For those of you getting a leg up on our reading schedule, the Chicago Examiner has a review of Travel Writing, our November selection (thanks for the mention!), and an interview with the author, Peter Ferry. Says Ferry on who he was writing for and how he's playing with the basic ideas of fiction:
Yes, my audience was my students. (I taught English at Lake Forest High School for twenty-seven years, and other than my children, that is my proudest contribution to this world.) My premise is that all fiction is based in fact or in real life experience, and that all the stories we tell about our real life experiences are partly fiction. This assumes that all stories of any kind are attempts to discover truth which may or may not have anything to do with the factual. To test this, think about the stories you tell when you are with friends or having a couple beers or both; if you've told them repeatedly or over several years or enough beers, you've no doubt enhanced some parts, left out others, worked and massaged and perfected them until they have their own lives and may not have a lot to do with what actually happened a long time ago. That does not mean, however, that they do not have to do with truth.
