Fiction that isn't.

[Tobytook]

Originally posted by me
Perhaps it is more to do with memory also being a device for selective and - one step further - creative remembering.

As if by magic, noted writer/artist Will Eisner (pioneering creator of The Spirit and the father, it's safe to say, of the American graphic novel) lends credibility to my theory in his introduction to To The Heart Of The Storm (Kitchen Sink Press, 1991):

"I grew up in the safety of America during the brewing of the storm that culminated in World War II. It was a voyage through... social awakenings and a pervading concern with economical survival...
When I began work on this book, I intended to deliver a narrowly focused fictional experience of that climate, but... it metamorphosed into a thinly-disguised autobiography. In such a work, fact and fiction become blended with selective recall and result in a special reality. I came to rely on the truthfulness of visceral memory."

Not sure how much closer that puts us to a method for establishing a criteria, but it's a start. (Although I think I'm the only one flogging this horse now, anyway.)

Tobytook, still looking for the answers

 

[jessica]

Just wanted to let you know I share your frustration with publisher's categories, not only between fiction and non but within the categories of fiction, art, social science, etc.

We just had a store reset at the bookstore where I work and so many of the stickers on the backs of the books put them in the wrong category, such as In Cold Blood in fiction and Sharon Kay Penman in general fiction instead of historical fiction. I even found copies of The Diary of Anne Frank with fiction stickers on them.

Sorry, I know this doesn't help your dilemna, but I saw the category and it reminded me of my frustration.