The Strength of Nonfiction

"There are 215 Brian Doyle's in the United States, according to a World Wide Web site called 'Switchboard'" (163). Doyle's opening line is simple and factual. I would believe if you told me it was taken from a research paper. So why is it so intriguing? Why would a sentence so basic be a hook?

Simply put, nonfiction is an oft-undervalued form of writing.

While Being Brians is true and relatively straightforward in its delivery and writing style, I'd go as far as to label it "creative nonfiction." Why? Because if I tried to write the very same piece in the same way, no one would want to read it. It took skill and craft, and a basic understanding of human nature to put together an essay like this. I think the greatest strength he played off of was his interest in the matter.

Doyle was interested enough in whom he shared his name with to look them up in the first place. He didn't stop there, though, and wrote them and asked for responses. I'm sure his interest was only piqued more when he received the first replies, and whatever it kindled in him must have been fun. Lots of fun. I think Doyle used interest in two ways. The first way he used it was simple. If he thought this was interesting, others must find it interesting, too. The second way he used this fascination was as a drive. If someone is passionate about a social issue, he or she is going to know a lot about it. They will also want to share it with everyone and at every time. This project of Doyle's may not have been so strong as to be a passion, but he sure used his curiosity as a motivation to share, too.

He doesn't spend more than a page introducing the topic of his essay before presenting us with quotes, the actual responses he received. In an exercise of wise conservation, he trusts those replies to carry their own importance, giving simple introductions to many of them, such as "Brian, the undergraduate at the University of Kansas:" (165) or "Brian of Red Hook, New York, eighteen years old:" (165).

The result was that I found myself interested, I found myself caring about these responses. Even though I don't know a single Brian Doyle, and even though it wasn't people sharing my name that were sharing about their lives, I wanted more, grammar errors and all.

I was led briefly down a path of imagination, one in which every "Brian Doyle" in the piece was instead an "Alexander Hirata." How fun that would be.

The interest, the imagination, the subsequent visit to Switchboard–all of it because the real life, the nonfiction is interesting in itself.

-Alexander Hirata