HOUSE

Nonfiction, as a genre that transcends modes of mass-media communication, is taking over. It's a not-quite-but-almost coequal partner with fiction in popular and unpopular literature; but recently, you've more likely seen the rise of nonfiction in television (and movies, if you count the Clooneyized adaptation of Sebastian Junger's 'A Perfect Storm'). From MTV's perennial 'Real World', to it's recent 'The Osbournes', to the host of flunkifying reality-TV shows that have been washing up and out on network television the past couple seasons, writers have simply stopped making stuff up. If it's not stranger than fiction, non-fictive truth is at least as good of a story.

The granddad of this whole nonfiction thing is probably Tom Wolfe; but granddad can be a bit crusty, and hard to relate to sometimes - so it couldn't hurt to hang out with the younger, less venerated but nonetheless important uncle of contemporary creative nonfiction - Tracy Kidder. I can't say I know too much more about him than what was on the inside flap of House and what others have told me in passing; but, to get the gist of him (yeah, Tracy's a guy), I don't think you have to know too much more than that.

House is the story of a house. When it begins, a young upper-middle class family in the collegiate Arcadian hamlet of Amherst, Massachusetts wants to build a house. They hire an architect. They hire a builder. The builder builds the house. In the end, the family - the Souweines - moves into the house. The Souweines are happy with their new house, and the book ends. The real story of House is the simmering clash of class resentments, latent anger and personality that forms a trans-mundane three way conflict between the Souweines, their architect and the builders.

Kidder's talent lays in dredging the depths of his (real) characters and bringing up subtle internal and external antagonisms that create the real drama real people (even boring ones) really live everyday. Even other prime nonfiction stylists, granddad included, would likely be much more ham-fisted about it. Kidder's talent, tragically, is inextricable from those qualities which can make House (and lots of nonfiction, it's a premise thing really) a tedious read. Ultimately, the reality in Kidder's reality-literature can't have the gravity of reality sculpted for fiction plots. Unless he were to deal with, oh, a murder, the travails of an international drug kingpin, or some kind of spy-thriller type story - all the subtle conflict in the world can't compete with a made-up scenario in which the characters actually had something to lose over the course of the narrative. Ultimately, Kidder does a great job seeing conflict where others might overlook it, and making those sublimated resentments breath fresh air - but, again, ultimately, all those sublimated resentments give rise to a series of arguments between the Souweines and their contractors over who'll foot the $900 for a set of stairs.

That, along with the excursions into construction history Kidder takes and the symbolism he hints at, will be enough to hold some people's attention; but not everyone's.