Narrative Truthiness

Narrative Truthiness explores the complex nature of truth by adapting Stephen Colbert's concept of truthiness (which on its own repudiates complexity) into something nuanced and positive, what Annjeanette Wiese calls "narrative truthiness." Narrative truthiness holds on to the importance of facts while complicating them by looking at different types of truth, as well as the complexity, contradictions, and consequences of truth in the context of human experience. Wiese uses narrative theory to analyze several examples of hybrid (non)fiction: works that refuse to exist as either fiction or nonfiction alone and that challenge monolithic definitions of truth. She examines memoirs by Lauren Slater, Michael Ondaatje, Binjamin Wilkomirski, Tim O'Brien; fiction by Julian Barnes, Richard Powers, W. G. Sebald; Onion headlines; comics and graphic memoirs by Joe Sacco, Art Spiegelman, and David Small; and fake news. Narrative Truthiness foregrounds the complexity that is inherent in human understanding and experience and in the process demonstrates the significance of the complex tensions between what we feel to be true and what is true, and how we are shaped by both.

"Fictionality and Multimodal Narratives interrogates the multimodal relationship between fictionality and factuality. The contemporary discussion about fictionality coincides with an increase in anxiety regarding the categories of fact and fiction in popular culture and global media. Today's media-saturated historical moment and political climate give a sense of urgency to the concept of fictionality, distinct from fiction, specifically in relation to modes and media of discourse. Torsa Ghosal and Alison Gibbons explicitly interrogate the relationship of fictionality with multimodal strategies of narrative construction in the present media ecology. Contributors consider the ways narrative structures, their reception, and their theoretical frameworks in narratology are influenced and changed by media composition-particularly new media. By accounting for the relationship of multimodal composition with the ontological complexity of narrative worlds, Fictionality and Multimodal Narratives fills a critical gap in contemporary narratology-the discipline that has, to date, contributed most to the conceptualization of fictionality"--

Mediated Narration in the Digital Age examines mediated narration from 1991 through 2018. Peter Joseph Gloviczki considers this pivotal period spanning the rise of the World Wide Web through the growth of social media to understand how contemporary media accounts storied everyday life and times of crisis. He uses examples across media culture to show that complicated issues benefit from a critical poststructuralist approach to journalism, which promotes a communitarian ethos of respect, inclusion, and dialogue. Textual analysis of a wide range of media narratives--from a 2012 YouTube clip outlining a time line of the Sandy Hook school shootings, to coverage of then-newly-discovered footage of President Roosevelt in a wheelchair in 2013, to the Cincinnati Enquirer's 2017 piece "Seven Days of Heroin"--illustrate how theoretical concepts work in practice while explaining the new media environment. In response to the lack of awareness of news as mediated narration, Gloviczki calls for journalists to be aware of their role in meaning-making and the attendant ethical responsibilities. He provides the analysis essential to effective practice that emphasizes the connection between the individual and the community in order to more fully represent the mediated body.

Stephen Colbert is far more than a comedian and improv genius. As head of his fanciful Colbert Nation, the quick-witted host of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report has delighted fans with his wit, audacity, and innovative uses of language and the media. In this biography, award-winning journalist Bruce Watson, author of Jon Stewart: Beyond the Moments of Zen, charts Colbert's rise from boyhood tragedy to "greatest living cultural/media critic."

Why has punditry lately overtaken news? Why do lies seem to linger so long in the cultural subconscious even after they’ve been thoroughly discredited? And why, when more people than ever before are documenting the truth with laptops and digital cameras, does fact-free spin and propaganda seem to work so well? True Enough explores leading controversies of national politics, foreign affairs, science, and business, explaining how Americans have begun to organize themselves into echo chambers that harbor diametrically different facts—not merely opinions—from those of the larger culture.

Everything was about to change. In less than forty-eight hours guy'd be taking the stage in Vancouver, owning an audience meant for some all-hype-no-talent young-money rapper, spitting next-level truths that'd have A&Rs scrapping for him coast to coast. He'd ink some paper and drop an album on the world it didn't even know it had been waiting for. All with game and swag to spare. This was the edge, the almost there, and we knew it. Chinksta rap is all the rage in small-town Alberta. And the king of Chinksta is King Kwong, high-schooler Run's older brother. Run isn't a fan of Kwong's music—or personality, really. But when Kwong goes missing the night before his crowning performance and his mom gets wounded in crossfire, Run finds himself, with his sidekick, Ali, in the middle of a violent battle between rival Chinese rap gangs, on the run from his crush's behemoth brother, and rethinking his feelings about his family and their history, his hatred of "rice-rap," and what it means to be Asian. With imaginAsian and a flair for the rap lyric, Jon Chan Simpson mashes up the (graphicless) graphic novel and the second-generation-immigrant narrative to forge a bold new vision of what the novel can be. Jonathan Chan Simpson grew up in Red Deer, Alberta, and lives in Toronto, Ontario. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto's MA creative writing program, and his work has been featured in Ricepaper magazine.