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I think of the truth (with my ill-advisedly chosen lower-case word) is roughly equivalent to non-fiction, and that non-veridicality is necessary for fiction. Fiction may contain veridical statements, but need not; non-fiction may, through inadvertence or ignorance or dishonesty, contain non-veridical statements. I think that stating things that way is fairly accurate, and useful, and gets at what I think is the real problem.
I believe that fiction can be entirely non-veridical (include no statement that is factually true), and yet have some implication or show something about humans or reality that is accurate, and true. "Crime and Punishment" comes close to that. The same can be said of non-fiction: Tolland's or Tuchmann's books. A CRC handbook may have fewer large Truths in it, to use the capitalization kludge. But the latter, non-fiction works consist of almost no knowingly non-veridical statements, i.e., include only true statement, while the former is entirely a figment of Fyodor's epileptic imagination.
I agree: saying fiction is non-fiction (or non-veridical statements are veridical) is dishonest. More than that: The defense Frey's been given is disheartening, not because it confuses two genres in the publishing industry, but because it suggests some people really don't care that they've been lied to, and the veridical/non-veridical distinction is meaningless. This is handy for some purposes, no doubt, but not for sound policy or reasoned discourse. They've taken non-veridical statements as veridical, and said, ultimately, not only that there's no problem worth attacking, but that others' attacking it is itself worth condemning! Will they care the next time? Do they like the idea of lies being presented as fact? Do they even see the difference? I don't care why they do it--conformity to their peer group, ideological or doctrinal allegiance, grasping for hope in the throes of existential Angst: It disturbs me. And it's done far too often in American discourse today.
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