Lifespan of a Coffee Drinker
(from the forthcoming The Lifespan of a Fact, by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal)
The text in bold is a sentence from John D’Agata’s essay “What Happens There” published in The Believer in January 2010 and later published in the book-length work About a Mountain. After the bold type, confirmation from The Believer’s fact-checker Jim Fingal.
On Feb. 27, Norton will publish The Lifespan of a Fact which asks the question: how negotiable is a fact in nonfiction? In the book, Fingal fact-checks every sentence (sometimes even individual words) in a tug of war with D’Agata over fact, fiction, and the very definition of literary nonfiction.
