The power of truth : literary scandals and creative nonfiction

In times of crisis, flux and uncertainty, the audience for works of nonfiction increases (Gerard 1996: 3). The years of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have certainly been such a period of political and social insecurity and sales of nonfiction books have, indeed, soared. During this time, the Internet and other multimedia technologies have, moreover, fostered an explosion in the amount of information available to the point where the phrase 'information overload' has become a cliche. Readers are also increasingly aware that much of this mass of information has had some degree of public relations 'spin' applied to it, just as they know that many previously respected sources of information - such as governments, organized religions and the press - have been exposed as having falsified, exaggerated or invented material and presented this to the public as fact. This set of circumstances has resulted in an unprecedented cynicism on the part of consumers of information, with the reliability of information a highly valued feature for readers of texts of all kinds.