Critical description of nonfiction prose technique often begins and ends with the phrase “creative nonfiction.” But that term is loosely defined, indicating little more than an element of memoir or a certain stylistic tone. I think there’s more to be said about the craft of non-fiction.
While creative nonfiction emphasizes a deliberately “literary” prose, the books I have in mind have a different voice. The prose may be highly-polished, but not necessarily poetic. The structure is often intricate. And the subject matter is not mainly personal; these are books about history, science, or both.
Specific examples I have in mind include Zach and Kelly Weinersmith’s A City on Mars (about the feasibility of colonies in outer space), Ryan North’s How to Invent Everything (roughly, about the history of science) and How to Take Over the World (very roughly, about the state of science and scientific issues facing humanity), and to some extent Gretchen McCulloch’s Because Internet (about the evolution of English and other languages in the internet age). Ada Palmer’s Inventing the Renaissance (about the Renaissance and its historiography) is close to traditional creative non-fiction, in its prose approach and occasional self-reflective point of view, but it fits here as well. Oliver Bullough’s Moneyland (about the misbehavior of oligarchs and problems with the global financial system) is also close.
These books communicate complex ideas about complex subjects, and do so with structures both unconventional and thought-through. North, for example, wrote (in a Goodreads post) that in How to Take Over the World “the fictional premise of world domination is used to motivate learning about all this really cool science and technology, and yes it’s full of jokes and great illustrations, but it’s also a sincere book that’s doing what it says on the cover.”
Bullough uses the extended metaphor of a “Moneyland” existing unconnected from terrestrial geography and populated by the ultra-rich as a way to talk about financial wrongdoing. The Weinersmiths include cartoons and occasional brief fictional imaginings of a space traveler. Palmer uses devices such as point-of-view shifts, brief biographical chapters, and descriptions of a kind of scholarly role-playing game to get across the multiplicity of the Renaissance, the multiplicity of views of the Renaissance over time, and then also the fact that her book is another view of the Renaissance within that multiplicity.
Notably, in all these books the prose is intelligent, often funny, but typically conversational—neither academic nor self-consciously poetic. Palmer, a highly-praised novelist, is the most “literary”; she constructs a voice that can vary from a casual register, reaching out to a broad audience, to a more elevated tone that indicates what’s worth particular respect if not some level of awe.
These books’ prose may read as though shaped by the experience of social media, Twitter-as-it-was most likely in crispness and pacing. These writers are all relatively young, and their generation’s experience of internet writing may be relevant. Yet beyond style there’s a grasp of their subjects, in detail and the overall shape of the relevant field, that informs the texts. Their work marries the concision of a Bluesky or Twitter thread with intelligent and unusual structural choices that bring out the book’s subject.
I’m used to reading non-fiction popularizing academic subjects by two fairly distinct kinds of writers, the first academics trying to reach a wider audience, and the second professional writers—typically journalists—bringing some kind of linguistic verve to their topic. In the first case, the academic might or might not manage an accessible prose style; and might or might not find and execute a structure more complex than following an introduction with a series of single-topic chapters before a conclusion wraps everything up. In the second case, the generalist writer might or might not grasp the subject in its entirety, might or might not have fully thought through the boundaries of their subject, and might or might not have anticipated counter-arguments to their positions.
The nonfiction I’m struggling to describe is mostly written by experts, whose expertise coexists with the ability to deploy an effective casual style. McCulloch and Palmer are academics in their fields, and Kelly Weinersmith is an ecologist whose studies influenced her book, while North has a Master’s in Computer Science. Bullough is a magazine writer, but as an investigative journalist has a particular engagement with his subject (and, for what it’s worth, also has a history degree).
This nonfiction is by experts able to write for a general audience, marrying engaging informal stylistic approaches with the intelligence of writers who know their subject in depth. That’s not been unheard-of among academics in years past, but I wonder if it’s more common now, among a generation that’s developed in a specific relationship to social media.
As a reader I’m finding books that communicate a density of information without being overwhelming, something especially appropriate for the information age. I’m finding nonfiction that uses new strategies and structures to fit individual pieces of data into conceptual frameworks. This is clearly good, whatever the cause.