The Lifespan of a Fact

rdf:langString The Lifespan of a Fact

rdf:langString The Lifespan of a Fact is a book co-written by John D'Agata and Jim Fingal and published by W.W. Norton & Company in 2012. The book is written in a non-traditional format consisting of D’Agata's 2003 essay “What Happens There” in black text centered on each page with Fingal's black and red comments (and occasional correspondence with D’Agata) making up two columns that surround and note certain portions of the essay. Readers follow not only the essay as originally written in 2003 by D’Agata, but also the fact checking process in which Fingal and D’Agata engage during the seven-year gap between the original submission of the essay to The Believer in 2005, and the publishing of the book by Norton in 2012. As D’Agata and Fingal discuss the various liberties taken during the composition of the original text, the discourse leads to explorations of the importance of narrative flow in non-fiction and the role of fact checking when writing creatively about true events.