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This thesis is a collection of five pieces of creative nonfiction written over the academic years 2003—2005. Creative nonfiction is a genre that, in some form or another, has always existed, though trends in form and style are constantly in flux. Based on the experiences of the actual author, creative nonfiction seeks to present the journey of a mind at work, in a style that is candid, quirky, and insightful. It seeks to persuade its reader by establishing a likeable and trusted narrator; by relating interesting facts that teach the reader something about the subject at hand; and by appealing to the reader's emotions, especially through techniques of metaphor and figurative language typically employed by writers of fiction, poetry, and drama. Thus, it utilizes the three main tools of rhetoric laid down by that great orator of yore, Aristotle; namely, ethos, logos, and pathos. Rather than exploring one subject in-depth, as is typical of a thesis, this work explores a number of different topics, as is typical of creative nonfiction. The topics include my physical quirks, especially a congenital defect that prevents me from smelling; my volunteer experiences at the Provo, Utah Boys and Girls Club; the traditions of fishing and storytelling in my family; and my burgeoning interest in family history, which was stimulated by a trip to Pine Valley, Utah—a small, rural town in southwestern Utah where some of my early Mormon ancestors settled. The pieces are united more by form than by content, as well as by having been filtered through a single consciousness. Mostly, they are supposed to be enjoyable reading.

This mixed-media memoir uses a variety of forms from short epigrammatic essays to straightforward stories and graphic narratives to explore the author’s coming-of-age experiences augmented by chronic illness. Trying to succeed in the film industry, romance, and family situations, the young female narrator navigates the often unexpected or disappointing consequences of having an autonomic nervous system disorder. Relationships between conflicting identities emerge—between healthy versus sick self, projected/envisioned versus actual self, and tough versus vulnerable self—as the narrator journeys toward a more complete and accepting self-understanding.

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Literature review -- Methodology -- Body of project : Fire in the belly. / Dept. of Journalism

This study is comprised of two parts: an unauthorised biography of the South African musician David Kramer, as well as a reflective look at the process of writing this biography. In this regard the following aspects were looked at closely: finding an appropriate style, biography versus propaganda, conjecturing, the bilingual nature of the text, problems of research, ethics, influences, make-believe, approach to the subject, intertextuality, and fictionalisation. The central question of the biography is to highlight the success of a fellow Worcester (the author’s hometown) boy. The central research questions of the thesis are the fictionalisation of the nonfiction text, intertextuality, and the question of a text written in both English and Afrikaans. With regard to the aforementioned fictionalisation, a biographical text is classified as “nonfiction”, because it deals with a real person and real events. However, a text such as David Kramer – an unauthorised biography presents an alternative perspective, in that the narrative often moves into fiction, or “creative nonfiction”. Written texts are traditionally divided into two fields: fiction or nonfiction. Nonfiction is deemed to be fact, truth, whereas fiction is the fruit of an author’s imagination. But perhaps the notion of truth versus untruth is too limited, and one should include the words “objectivity” and “subjectivity”. Some texts incorporate both elements, be they newspaper editorials which are mostly opinion, advertisements which are highly subjective, or biographies such as Taraborrelli’s Madonna – An Intimate Biography, which often reads as a novel. This doctoral thesis looks at David Kramer – an unauthorised biography, which is at times “faction”, to illuminate the sections where the text fell somewhere between fiction or nonfiction. In attempting this exercise, intertextuality was useful in two ways. Firstly, to ground the text in a reality the reader could believe, as it brought “real” things to the text, such as song lyrics, photographs, et cetera, all things which brought some credibility to the truth of the text, and secondly to place the events being described in a certain timeframe. The use of English and Afrikaans in the biography was to reflect that Kramer uses both languages in his songs, and furthermore, to give an idea of the South Africa at the time of Kramer’s early success: the divides of English/Afrikaans, white/black, liberal/conservative. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Unit for Creative Writing / Unrestricted

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