Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in On Writing Well, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Human Element
Simplicity vs. Clutter
Process and Organization
The Gift of Writing
Summary
Analysis
When Zinsser and three women he met at a writing conference went on the radio to talk about their profession, the radio host kept asking about their literary ambitions and comparing them to novelists. The host had never heard of nonfiction writers like Joan Didion and Tom Wolfe. Many contemporary writers face this predicament: people assume that “literature” means fiction and poetry, even though the vast majority of writers now focus on nonfiction.
In this chapter, Zinsser explains why Americans should take nonfiction as seriously as fiction, even though many do not. The radio host’s incessant questioning shows that, when people assume that nonfiction isn’t literature, they often really think that nonfiction isn’t meaningful creative work and writers can’t possibly find it fulfilling. Zinsser wants to dispel this harmful myth by showing that nonfiction requires skill, creativity, and passion. He also wants to show that nonfiction is at least as relevant to the public and the literary world as fiction.
Themes
In the early 1900s, Americans mostly read fiction. The Book-of-the-Month Club mailed them novels, and popular magazines mainly published short stories. But during World War II, Americans started caring more about the world around them, so they switched to nonfiction. Now, nonfiction is the true American literature, and nonfiction writers cover every imaginable topic. Zinsser lists many books that combine history, social science, and biography to tell compelling stories about the world. Fiction is still important, but well-written nonfiction and journalism also count as literature. Each writer has to follow their own interests in order to develop, and today, most end up writing nonfiction.
There are a few ways to think about the term “literature.” It could be a term for any writing with artistic value. By showing that people choose to read nonfiction for the sake of beauty and enjoyment (in addition to mere information), Zinsser suggests that nonfiction is creative enough to count as literature. On the other hand, literature could also refer to the work that reflects a certain nation or culture’s consciousness at any given point in time. In this sense of the word, nonfiction is also literature, because it’s the main genre that Americans produce and read in order to understand their own culture. Either way, nonfiction is clearly important to contemporary Americans. In Zinsser’s view, nonfiction writers have a responsibility to inform the public about the world, but also the privilege to choose what stories they want to spread.
Themes
