A Passion for Nonfiction by Guest Writer Dorothy Ours

[photo credit: Maggie Kimmitt]

What fascinates you?

Answer that question and you may see the main subject—or subjects—of your writing life. In my case, horses. Especially racehorses, facing challenges that bring out extraordinary gameness and even redefine what seems possible.

So what about genre?

Any form of writing could tell these racehorse stories. I think we writers are influenced by three primary factors:

1) the form, or forms, we most enjoy as readers;

2) what people in our orbit want or need to read;

3) what’s popular in the publishing world.

That last one—what publishers publish—shapes us, even if we aren’t consciously pursuing any trend. If I had grown up in the late 1800s instead of a century later, I likely would have written racehorse ballads such as “Ten Broeck and Mollie” or poems for recitation, such as “How Salvator Won.”

Of course any writer, in any time, is free to explore and publish in several forms. I also think that each kernel of an idea knows what shape it needs. So, in my case, as an author: so far, why just one form? Why plant a flag near the boundary between history and narrative nonfiction?

* * *

Nearly as soon as I began reading, the seeds were there. I grew up seeking out all types of horse stories, fiction and non. The first full-length book I ever read was by Marguerite Henry, who studied actual heroic equines and spun their stories into fiction for young readers. In Henry’s worlds, you felt how it would be to make friends with a wild-born pony, partner a gallant filly to victory in America’s top trotting race, or discover that your small, hardy, New England stallion excelled as both a farm horse and a racer.

Clarence W. (C. W.) Anderson also wrote horsey fiction: the “Billy and Blaze” series about an adventuresome boy and his fearless pony. But Anderson offered something even more tantalizing: short profiles of famous racehorses, collected in volumes such as Twenty Gallant Horses and Deep Through the Heart. These weren’t imaginary or embellished scenes. This was real. And because it was real, that much more thrilling to me.

These influences ran deep when I decided to write a book about the racehorse known as the “Speed Miracle” of 1920: the immortal Man o’ War. It needed to be nonfiction, because we already had a richly imagined, partly-fictionalized Man o’ War book (by Walter Farley, author of The Black Stallion series). And most of all, it needed to be nonfiction because Man o’ War inspired plenty of mythology. I wanted to delve past the exaggerations and know the actual horse.

First came heaps of research, which gradually fell into chapters. Eventually seeking an agent, I queried several who were strong in Nonfiction, History, Biography, and Sports. Though not written in academic style, this was going to be a scholarly work. The point was to know Man o’ War before fame remade him—as well as understand why he was, and is, remembered so gloriously.

During the agent search, one reacted to a sample chapter by saying, “You need to throw away your index cards.” From a commercial perspective, I needed to learn to let the narrative breathe.

While that agent left me floundering, another saw promise in the book idea. A former editor, himself, he red-penned one page. Now, this fledgling would-be nonfiction writer became mindful of potential traps. No “making the reader wait.” “Kill your darlings,” when they get in the way of clarity. And more, but those two were my most persistent foes.

Happily, around the time agent John Ware agreed to work with me, horse racing was an unexpectedly hot topic. Seabiscuit: An American Legend, by Laura Hillenbrand, became a New York Times #1 bestseller. New York publishing houses might give racehorse biographies a chance.

* * *

While I already had a vision for Man o’ War—following wherever the evidence would lead—the Seabiscuit model loomed large. Of course publishers want to offer trustworthy information to a nonfiction book’s audience; yet also, they are selling entertainment. Turns out, horsey biographies have something in common with the True Crime genre: the desire for nonfiction that reads like a novel.

I didn’t know the term, 20 years ago, but my history/biography books would be running alongside narrative nonfiction. And I didn’t realize it, 20 years ago, but here was the challenge of my nonfiction/history author life: writing an inviting read that’s neither technical manual nor tall tale.

For yours truly, the nonfiction part of narrative nonfiction is hard-wired. Wanting to know how and why something happened is one of my core qualities. This dovetails with the nonfiction writer’s responsibility to stone-cold history: if you don’t identify the most reliable information for your readers, what’s the point? Of course knowledge can and will change, over time, as additional information comes to light. We do the best we can with the information we have, up until deadline. There’s a core responsibility, however, to weed out inaccuracies as best we can.

That is why I stand on the History side of the nonfiction/narrative nonfiction divide: employing narrative methods such as scenes, themes, and metaphor, while aiming to avoid the artistic license pitfalls of True Crime. For me, a cautionary tale is Truman Capote’s brilliant “nonfiction novel,” In Cold Blood. Capote strayed from the known facts, even fabricating an ending to fit his own concept of what the story should be.

And so he missed what it actually was. Because real-life narratives are made of everything—including blank spaces and inconvenient elements. The historian sees this. The writer works from all of this. And rather than creating an “ideal” narrative, the history/nonfiction writer sees a story in what is and is not there.

Historians can propose theories about what did and did not happen, how something happened, or why it likely did not. Which brings us to the role of speculation in storytelling. Again, a True Crime example blinks a caution light at me.

A few years ago, I finally read Erik Larsen’s bestseller The Devil in the White City, a marvelous evocation of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. The serial killer plot line, however, tried to have the best of both the known history (patchy) and the most sensational moments (bringing us readers into the killer’s secret room, with the murderer and a victim, while the horror of what will happen dawns on her). Yes, a nonfiction writer can extrapolate from known information. Yet also, there are limits in describing someone else’s experience—if the work is supposed to be best-effort history and we don’t have their own testimony.

* * *

To me, this is the challenge and the fascination in bringing scenes from history to life. Nonfiction writers can consider whatever physical evidence is available, when picturing a scene. For example—for this excerpt from my second book, Battleship: A Daring Heiress, A Teenage Jockey, and America’s Horse (2013)—I consulted weather data for a particular day in 1935, walked the Maryland Hunt Cup jumping course (making notes and taking photographs), then considered those findings while describing the situation as a rider and his favorite mount approach a crucial obstacle:

Hotspur, in the lead, held his course to the right. Noel and Trouble Maker aimed for the left, where in a little while they would cut the corner turning for home. Midafternoon light warmed their backs, illuminating the relatively low rails up ahead—fence seventeen, described by Bill Streett as “the black sheep of the lot . . . a stinking little fence sitting down in a dip.” And Trouble Maker did not meet it right.

Horsemen know that sometimes it’s the stinking little fence, not the fearsome giant, that invites the worst fall. Obvious hazards generate respect; small ones encourage overconfidence. Trouble Maker’s hind feet smacked the ground far in front of unremarkable fence seventeen, his body vaulted into the air, and suddenly everything wasn’t all right.

Constrained by the historical record, I couldn’t quite put us in the rider’s mind. Still, I could almost put us in the saddle.

Will this author ever leap over the line, into full-on narrative nonfiction? Unlikely—because if I leap away, the natural landing place for me is historical fiction. Tell the reader, up front, that imagination is filling places where the evidence ends.

Until then—if ever there is a “then”—welcome, metaphor! and other ways of invoking atmosphere that I was beginning to grasp when Man o’ War was published, back in 2006. This passage from that first book seeks to blend experiences that are knowable (such as the sounds of an afternoon at the Saratoga races) with the perceptions of someone—in this case, a young horse—living long ago:

Weaning not from his dam this time but from the Kentucky fields that had been all he had known, Man o’ War moved into a new stall. Like all horses, his senses of hearing and smell were more sensitive than any human’s. Like all horses, he depended on those senses for warnings or comfort. He heard his confused companions whinny and shuffle nearby in the straw beds—restless, then gradually still. He inhaled the scent of evergreens and crisp Adirondack air. During the nights, he heard a new kind of hush, sprinkled with unfamiliar sounds from the nearby town. During most afternoons, six times his ears picked up a muffled roar from the racecourse, roughly a quarter mile away. It was throatier than the tree-shaking, grass-rustling winds at the Nursery . . . sudden as a barking dog, but deeper, and wide . . . like the train he had recently ridden within, gathering speed and volume . . . unlike the steady rattle within the train, a swelling, then abruptly dropping sound. Unlike the train, alive.

I was a kid who would check out every horse book in the school and public libraries. My first book was one I could not find on those shelves. My second—and third, in progress—stem from that early 20th century immersion. And while I didn’t plan to write multiple books with Man o’ War connections, it also isn’t surprising. Not merely from a franchising viewpoint, but largely because deep research within a certain area and era reveals intriguing characters, raises fresh questions, and deepens understanding of that environment.

Subject-wise, why stick with Thoroughbred racing? I haven’t run out of racehorse themes and questions, yet.

Genre-wise, why grapple with history that borders on narrative nonfiction? There’s always hope of solving bits of old puzzles—while channeling moments where fact and poetry converge.

Check back for next month's guest, author Erika Mailman -- and new author posts on memoir, travel writing, and more! --AES