At the beginning of Chapter Eight, I defined prose as writing or speech which lacks regular rhythmic patterns, but does have a logical order of ideas, evidence of the writer's voice or style, and careful word choice and sentence construction.  The term nonfiction describes writing based in fact rather than imagination, although specialized genres such as historical fiction and the nonfiction novel attempt to bridge the gap between fact and fantasy.  Common forms of nonfiction prose include journals, letters, biography and autobiography, reviews, travel writing, and opinion writing.  At present, more opportunities exist to publish nonfiction than any other type of writing.

Although nonfiction prose must be based in reality and adhere to the facts as they are known, this type of writing shares many characteristics with poetry and fiction.  Vivid imagery and figurative language give nonfiction a poetic flavor, and authors often impress a narrative structure on nonfiction writings.  The writer of nonfiction prose must carefully analyze the purpose of the writing and the intended audience to determine how much detail and what type of vocabulary to use, as well as how much background explanation will be necessary to enable the reader to understand the subject matter.  The writer should organize the facts carefully before writing to avoid the temptation to add or subtract information to make a more interesting story at the expense of truth.

The journal constitutes a distinct genre, becoming an art form of great beauty when written by masters such as Samuel Pepys and John Cheever.  All writers should remember that journals kept privately may become public after the author's death.  Many journal entries include two types of information:  a listing of events and the writer's reactions to and discussion of those events.  The concrete details and emotional responses collected in a journal mirror reality as experienced by one person.  Despite subjectivity, such records provide valuable historical information.  In Journal of the Plague Year, published in 1722, Daniel Defoe wove his own and his parents' memories together with official statistics to produce a unique portrait of 1665 and the epidemic of Black Plague which race through London in that year, killing many people and striking fear into the hearts of all.  Without Defoe's careful work, we would have little first-hand knowledge of this time in history.

Of course, the rough notes made by a writer keeping a journal may require rewriting, organization, and editing before being presented to an audience.  Example 10.1 shows notes as they were written in a journal.  These notes were made during a meeting at which historian and politician Roy Medvedev spoke and during a later conversation with the well-known Russian historian who chronicled Stalin's crimes in Let History Judge.

Medvedev - USSR - RFSR
   local wishes to adopt/control
   euphoria will pass
Nato -- danger?
current situation should be supported
stabilizers important in world
cooperative unity of democratic states
peace keepers
par
7th & last interplanetary
   conf on exch. & coop -- security -- in Europe
last -- need new system
   new idea of cooperation

Later the writer went over the notes, organizing, arranging, and adding remembered information.  The journal notes provided just enough details to jog the writer's memory and produce additional reactions to the event.  A developed and revised version is seen in Example 10.2.

Waved ahead by a guard, our blue and white Intourist bus rolls through the red rock walls of the Borovitskaya Tower gate and into the Kremlin.  Outside the Praesidium of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R., we linger to take pictures of each other, then hurry into a vast cool building floored with beautiful patterns of inlaid wood.  In the meeting room, right next to the large hall where even now the Supreme Soviet is in session, we sit at the long wooden table and pour ourselves glasses of salty mineral water.  The white marble walls of the room glow in light cast by crystal chandeliers.

Then Roy Medvedev, member of the Supreme Soviet and author of Let History Judge, a truthful account of the Stalin years, slowly and thoughtfully praises organizations which promote cooperation among nations, calling such groups as ours peace-keepers.  Medvedev cautions us to beware of the motives of those who aspire to leadership in the new political parties.

After the meeting, I speak with Mr. Medvedev for a few minutes, thrilled to meet a hero of the struggle for human rights.  A group gathers, and Russians and Americans together talk of the future we hope to build, a future in which the freedom to speak out against injustice is preserved.

If the audience for the journal is only the writer, then entries can be made in any style.  We find our own writing easy to understand and have no trouble filling in gaps.  However, if the writer shares the journal with others, editing will probably be necessary.  John Cheever's journals have recently been published posthumously, edited by his wife and children to keep some family secrets while revealing many others.  The family chose to print Cheever's expressions of deep loneliness and struggles with homosexuality because such information is essential to understanding his character.  Ted Hughes, the husband of poet Sylvia Plath, destroyed the journal his wife kept just before her suicide because he wanted to protect their children from their mother's last desperate thoughts.  Whether or not we agree with such editing, writers and their families are entitled to a certain degree of privacy, and readers are entitled to a measure of organization and editing for redundancy.

Before the invention of the telephone, people separated from friends and family by distance communicated with letters.  Like journal entries, letters often preserve and present historical information in a startlingly fresh manner.  Roman writer Pliny the Younger chronicled the A.D. 79 eruption of Vesuvius which destroyed Pompeii.  Elizabeth Pruitt Stewart's Letters From a Woman Homesteader reveal frontier life in southwestern Wyoming with a woman's voice at once strong and tender.  However, unlike a journal, which is intended primarily for the writer, letters are written for a particular audience.  Like journals, letters present the reality experienced by one person, but letters interpret and develop ideas with a reader in mind.  Mrs. Stewart's letters to a friend were published in a newspaper in Denver and later collected in books.

For the most part, this traditional art form has been replaced by the telephone conversation, with a resulting loss both to those who would have received the letters soon after they were written and those who would see the letters many years later.  When I was in my early teens,  I found the letters my grandfather, a physician, wrote to his wife from France during World War I.  Although he died twenty-five years before my birth, his letters about his horse, eating beans, being gassed with nitrogen mustard, life in the trenches, and missing my grandmother and their three children allowed me to know and love him.  Many writers today keep the tradition of letters alive.  Poet Ted Kooser collects correspondence, both copies of his own writings and originals of letters he receives, and each January has the past year's writings bound into a book with the year numbered in gold on the spine.

Biography and autobiography make interesting reading.  The writer must know the subject well, preferably first-hand, and must collect enough reliable information to provide the reader with necessary background information.  Pictures and quotations are particularly important, allowing both writer and reader to see and hear the subject of the writing.  Biographical writings such as journals and letters preserve historical information which otherwise might be lost, and provide a rich source for the biographer.

Often such stories are enhanced by focusing on one aspect of the person's life.  For instance, when recording a grandparent's recollections of the good old days, the writer may want to center on and develop a particular event or time period.  My father's life spanned the years from horse and buggy days to a manned moon landing, and the story of his life would require hundreds of pages.  However, a short piece about the Roaring Twenties might focus on how my ordinarily strait-laced father came to own a canary-yellow coupe with bulletproof glass.

Autobiographical pieces tend to be quite salable, even for beginning writers.  Regular features such as "Young Mother's Story" in Good Housekeeping and hunting stories in men's magazines provide a good market for autobiographical articles.  Stories written for these markets should be well organized and clear, usually following a narrative structure from beginning to end, without flashbacks.  An introductory paragraph which hooks the reader's attention and an conclusion which sums up the events and outcome of the story keep readers interested and help them to remember what they have learned.  For women's magazines, solving a family problem makes a good article.  Hunting stories need not tell only of successes, although bringing back the big one probably sells better than the one that got away.

Reviewing provides many writers with opportunities to publish their writings and earn a little money, too.  For instance, the Idaho State Journal pays for reviews of the concerts of the Idaho State Civic Symphony, Bloomsbury Review gives a year's subscription in lieu of cash payment, and Illinois Issues pays $50 for reviews of books about Illinois.  However, the writer must have specialized knowledge about music, books, or Illinois to write for these publications.  Background knowledge about the subject of the review is vital because the writer must know enough about the subject to explain it to readers who know nothing.  The writer of the following review had spent a year researching and two years writing a novel about Cahokia and the Mississippian culture.  Without specialized knowledge about the subject, the writer would be unable to evaluate the book.

Cahokia:  archaeology in the midwest
Thomas E. Emerson and R. Barry Lewis, eds.  Cahokia and the Hinterlands:  Middle Mississippian Cultures of the Midwest.
Urbana and Chicago:  University of Illinois Press, 1991.  Pp. 357 with references and index.  $49.94 (cloth).

Mysterious mounds, huge flat-topped pyramids clustered together with smaller mounds of other shapes, puzzled early travelers to the great river region of the Midwest.  Early theories about the origin of these mounds, including construction by a mysterious race of prehistoric giants, gave way to contemporary thought supported by archaeological data:  once there existed a Native American culture of enormous complexity and influence in this area.

Cahokia and the Hinterlands:  Middle Mississippian Cultures of the Midwest, edited by Thomas E. Emerson, chief archaeologist with the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, and R. Barry Lewis, an anthropologist who teaches at the University of Illinois, compiles the most recent information about the influence of Cahokia, an archaeological site in western Illinois generally held to be the central focus and ideal site type of the Mississippian culture.

However, this book takes a new view, looking outside the Cahokia central area at what the editors call the hinterlands, times and places where the cultural artifacts (pottery, tools, living sites, and food remains) of the Mississippians begin to mutate, differ significantly from the ideal, and finally disappear.  The book focuses data through the double lenses of time and space, showing how variations in artifacts trace the flowering and the withering of Mississippian influence, both at Cahokia and in distant areas.

In a mid-volume essay, "Some Perspectives on Cahokia and the Northern Mississippian Expansion," Emerson laments the shortage of "'old-fashion' data-oriented archaeology", and lists four major research problems of the Cahokia area:  mound chronologies, site organization through time, site geomorphology, and cultural context with other American Bottom sites (221-2).  Lewis, on the other hand, is the edge-man, his only first-hand experience with the Cahokia site "one short trip. . .to guide a visiting archaeologist from Siberia" (vii).  The dual perspective, looking out from Cahokia with Emerson and looking in from the hinterlands with Lewis, emphasizes once again the value of studying the fertile edge, whether of an ecosystem or a culture.

One of the most important tracings in the book is the development of Emergent Mississippian and then Middle Mississippian culture, not by invasion from outsiders, but rather from the diffusion of changes in the ways of life of Late Woodland people who occupied the same geographic area.  Allied in time and place with Mississippian culture, the cultivation of maize seems to have been an important enabling factor.  Emerson and Lewis admit the limitations of current knowledge and the need for more data to clarify how intrusion and diffusion affected interaction between Mississippian subgroups. (x)

An extensively studied intrusive site, Aztalan in southeastern Wisconsin, is the focus of an article by Lynne G. Goldstein and John D. Richards, who propose visualizing sites as discrete and regional rather than as variant examples of the central culture.  This technique allows archaeologists to pursue a site's individual characteristics rather than viewing it as part of a whole; such tight focus gleans data valuable for eventually connecting the distant site to the center.  Goldstein and Richards explain why Aztalan is located on the Crawfish River on the basis of their analysis of the ecosystem, but admit their inability to provide evidence of the part played by Aztalan within the greater Mississippian system.

On the other side of the intrusion/diffusion dichotomy, Charles R. Moffat presents data which support the emergence of typical Mississippian culture from the concordant growth of several centers rather than one (256).  The regionalized Mississippians of the Lower Wabash Valley "exerted strong influence over much of eastern Illinois and may have limited Cahokia's influence in this direction" (256).  Moffat's findings indicate that Mississippian culture resulted from diffusion outward from regional centers rather than intrusion into outlying areas from the main Cahokia site.

The excellent graphics in the book, including regional and site maps, photographs of artifacts, and drawings which compare pottery types, allow the reader to trace changes which occurred as the Mississippian culture evolved.  Comparison sketches of pottery rims, for instance, provide vivid, concrete examples of differences in style over time and space which would not otherwise be apparent to the reader.  Maps place archaeological sites within regional and ecological contexts.

Readers interested in the archaeology of the Midwest will enjoy Cahokia and the Hinterlands.  This comparison of center and edge sharpens the focus of our understanding of Mississippian culture, but also clarifies the need for more research into the still-mysterious ways of the Mississippian people we know only by the mounds and artifacts they left behind.

Writers interested in reviewing should pick a particular publication and study reviews from a number of issues, paying close attention to the characteristic style, progression of ideas, and length of the reviews.  You may want to write to the review editor of the magazine requesting guidelines.  Enclose a self-addressed, stamped envelope.  Magazines tend to use a format for reviews, with a particular type of introduction, a few important quotations in the case of a book review, a discussion of the basic ideas or plot, and an evaluation of quality.

Keep in mind that in evaluations of quality one should err if necessary in the direction of kindness.  A major flaw might be mentioned near the end of the review, followed by a final summation which praises the good qualities of the book or performance being reviewed.  Writers who skewer the writing or performances of others tend to find themselves similarly pierced a few years later.  Remember, the person whose work you review may write about you in the future.  The key is to be honest but gentle.

Do you love to travel?  Take photos of exotic places?  Keep track of your experiences and thoughts in a journal?  Then travel writing may be for you.  Developed to a high art by intrepid British travelers, travel writing has grown increasingly popular in the United States.  You don't have to go to Bali or Turkestan or Africa to develop your skills in this genre.  Your part of the country possesses unique qualities unknown to those from other parts.  A firsthand knowledge of a place is the primary prerequisite for a good travel piece.  Thoreau wrote that he had traveled much in Concord, his home town.  We all have traveled much in our home areas, and each writer knows a great deal about local places and people, information which can be drawn upon for articles of interest to a general audience.  "The Peat Bar" grew out of a Sunday evening spent in Lima, Montana, which seemed at first to be just another dying western town.

The Peat Bar

We felt tired and hungry after a weekend spent driving muddy  back roads and hiking uphill in the rain.  The thin line on the map led indisputably from I-15, over the continental divide, and back to the interstate at DuBois, Idaho.  We tried three dirt roads, slick with mud, all of which gradually headed west.  Finally we decided to go back to the highway and give up our quest for the continental divide.

In Lima, Montana we saw the sign from the interstate:  Peat Bar, Cook Your Own Steak.  We drove around the rundown building and parked behind another Bronco.  Winslow looked at me with raised eyebrows. "Do we really want to do this?"

"It'll be a piece of Americana," I replied.  "An adventure."

He pulled on his sweater.  "I bet they don't wear mauve heather sweaters here."  He disappeared into the bar and came out a few minutes later.  "It's okay.  Three women, fifteen men, pool table, juke box, television.  And the menu has two things on it:  T-bone for fifty cents an ounce and sirloin for sixty cents."

I hopped out, patted the dog on the head, and followed Winslow through the door.  Inside, the bar was dark, paneled with rough gray wood.  To the left was a small dance floor and bandstand.  Toward the right, past tables and a large gas grill, small groups of people stood at the bar.

We sat at a table in a corner where we could watch the action.  The nearest group, a man and two women, clutched Budweisers in their hands, and leaned toward each other intently.  Next to them cowboys in hats and spurs had mixed drinks.  Farther down stood two Indians, also drinking Budweiser.

The young bartender came out walked over to us.  "What will you have?"

"Do you have Dos Equiis?  Corona?" Winslow asked.

The bartender grinned.  "This is Lima, Montana," he said.   "We've got most American beers, but we don't get any call for foreign stuff."

We nodded and settled for Miller Lite.

"Up here for the auction?" the bartender asked when he brought our beers.

"What auction?" I said.

"Carl over there, he owns the old store across the street.  Sold off everything in it today.  Lotta folks came in for the auction."

"No, we were just camping at the wildlife preserve,"  Winslow said.

"Well, Carl bought you these beers anyway.  You folks need  anything else?"

"We wondered about getting some dinner."  Winslow nodded toward the grill.

"Yeah, we got some steaks in the back.  You want to cook them yourselves?"

We looked at each other and grinned.  "Okay."

While we waited for the grill to heat, we ate lettuce and tomato salads with ranch dressing.  The cold beer tasted good.

A small dark-haired woman wearing dangling turquoise earrings came in, and a short man in a baseball cap followed her.  They passed the Indians and sat at the far end of the bar.  A minute later a bearded man wearing a cowboy hat entered.  A tall woman followed behind him wearing jeans so tight I wondered if she would be able to sit down.  Her face looked plain, but she had waist-length blond hair which she patted and pushed back over her shoulders.  This couple joined the other twosome.

"Americana,"  I said.

"The real west," Winslow added.

"This is what Stanley, Idaho aspires to be, a real western town.   But Stanley looks like a movie set, and the Peat Bar in Lima is real."

"And the people are nice.  Carl bought us these beers."

"Folks in Lima, Montana make strangers welcome."

Spurs jingled and two cowboys entered, one middle-aged with a black hat rolled up at the brim and a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.  The younger man stood taller, and his hat curved down all the way around.

"The older one is the boss,"  Winslow whispered.

"Maybe brothers?"

"Could be.  Or the rancher and his cowhand."

The two joined the knot of cowboys at the bar.

A woman in red pants and a red and white polka dot blouse  entered and walked up to the cowboys, and a man in a straw hat separated himself from the cowboy group to join her.  We could hear their conversation.

"I locked the keys in the truck," she said.

"Damn.  Mine is at home."  He turned to the group he had left.  "Hey, Dan, who broke into your truck last week?  I could use him now."

The men laughed. "Wish I knew who it was," a blond man in a  white hat answered.  "I'd lend him to you for a while before I sent him to jail."

The bartender brought out two frozen T-bones and lit the big  grill.  We slapped the rock-hard steaks on the grate and sat down again, figuring supper would take awhile to cook.

"Sometimes I miss living in a small town," I said to Winslow.  "Knowing everyone you meet, lifetime friendships."

"Pocatello, Idaho isn't small enough for you?"  Winslow tilted his head toward me and raised his eyebrows.  "Everywhere we go we meet a friend, an acquaintance, your students, my patients."

"You're right, there's no opportunity to be naughty in Pocatello because someone might find out and gossip."

Three women came in and sat at the table next to us.  Carl left the group of cowboys at the bar to join them.  Two other men drifted along.  While they gambled at the poker machine on the wall near us, we overheard bits of conversation.

"They're all married couples," Winslow whispered.

"Do you suppose this is a macho society?  Men are important  because they do business, and women are important because they feed men?"

He looked around.  "The women seem to be holding their own."

"What I really like about this place is that all these people belong here.  They fit together like bits of a puzzle."

A gray-haired woman in a blue polyester pant suit came in and sat at the bar.

"Hey, Barbara's here," shouted a blond cowboy at the next table.

"Just needed a little toddy for the body," she said.

The bartender mixed her a drink and put it on the bar in front of her.  She laid a five dollar bill on the counter, and he gave her quarters in change.

"Barbara's gonna play that poker machine," the loud cowboy said.  "And she's probably gonna win, too.  I just lost all my quarters in that machine, and it'll make me darn mad if you win, Barbara."

But Barbara lost her quarters, too.  The cowboys muttered about someone who'd won fourteen dollars off that machine just last week.  The bartender brought us two more beers.  Carl was still buying.

Meanwhile at the far end of the bar, the woman with long blond hair had attracted an admirer other than her escort.  One of the Indians ran his hands through her hair, pulling out strands and sniffing them.  She seemed to ignore him, but when he stopped for a minute to take a long pull on his beer, the woman began to caress her own hair, lifting it from underneath and letting it fall back on her shoulders.

Her bearded companion staggered past on his way to the door,  eyes unfocused, cowboy hat a little crooked, can of Bud in his hand.

"He's a lot drunker than I realized,"  Winslow said.  "He may lose that woman by default."

But a moment later the blond woman shook back her hair, drained her beer, and followed him out the door.

Our steaks were finally done, crisp outside and pink inside.  We buttered slices of bread, sprinkled on garlic powder, and toasted the bread for a moment on the grill.  The bartender brought our baked potatoes to the table.  We slathered butter and sour cream on the potatoes and dug in.

Two young girls came in and ordered strawberry daiquiris which they drank while they played pool.

"Doesn't seem like a strawberry daiquiri sort of place," I  observed.

Winslow was too busy chewing to answer.  While we ate, more  people drifted quietly out the door.  The party was winding down.

"No, can't stay, got to go see my Dad," said the loud blond  cowboy.

Barbara finished her drink and left.  Now the bar was nearly  empty.  The two girls sipped their pink treats while we put the steak bones in a doggy bag.

A poster on the wall advertised a dance next Saturday.  "I'll bet this place whoops and hollers on Saturday nights," I said.

We paid and left, walking into the brilliant evening sunshine.  The blond cowboy, the Indians, the blond woman, and her bearded friend stood in a little knot next to a truck.  The group leaned forward, intent on the conversation.

"I'll get him if he was lying to me," the blond cowboy said as the others drifted toward their cars.

We climbed into our Bronco and drove south on the interstate, heading toward home.  For a few minutes we watched the hills, the last few rain clouds, other cars.

"Small towns are great.  I really do miss knowing everyone,"  I  said.  "But I could never live in the small town I grew up in."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm different than those people, and if you're  different, you have to leave."  I thought for a moment.  "Or maybe I'm too much like them."

Winslow nodded.  "Look, a rainbow."

In the east a brilliant rainbow arched halfway up the sky.  A bit to the south hung a paler cousin, the rainbow's mirror image with colors reversed.  Happy to be both different and a part of it all, we watched until the two rainbows faded and disappeared into night.

A primary characteristic of travel writing is the appearance of the writer as a character.  Often, the writer's persona experiences difficulties, whines and complains, and wonders why the trip was ever begun.  The reader gloats:  he or she remains at home in physical comfort while taking an imaginary journey of great difficulty.  You cannot write travel articles by sitting at home and reading the encyclopedia and National Geographic.  A firsthand knowledge of the place is necessary, and the writer must use specific incidents to recreate the place and time for readers.  Most travel writers choose words carefully to indicate a particular attitude, thus leading readers to like or dislike that place.

 Some articles are written to sway readers to adopt a particular viewpoint or attitude.  For instance, a review may encourage readers to see a particular film, and a travel article may discourage readers from taking a trip.  Newspaper articles written by state conservation officers tell hunters where to find the elusive sage grouse, and many local arguments are thrashed out in the "Letters to the Editor" section of the newspaper.  All these types of writing have attitude in common.  In many types of writing, the writer's attitude hides behind facts or imaginative details, but in opinion writing, the goal is to persuade the audience to adopt the writer's point of view.  This is a different use of the term "point of view," which in fiction means the type of narration used, but in the current usage means the attitude of the writer toward a particular subject.

As you read through the letter to the editor of Cosmopolitan magazine in Example 10.4 below, think about how Nailil Kunz reveals her attitude toward her subject.  She chose examples to back up points she wanted to make.  In addition she used the extended metaphor of a brick wall and tied her ideas together with the phrase "You've come a long way, baby."

To the Editor:

A crime goes unpunished every day in America as the domestic battle rages between men and women.  Women attempt to claw their way over the wall of inferiority as men buy more mortar and bricks.  Perhaps the problem is not the men buying, but the women selling the bricks.

While thumbing through last month's issue of your magazine, I noticed several advertisements selling bricks for the wall.  A headline announced, "You've come a long way, baby," next to a scantily dressed woman seductively blowing smoke into my eyes.  I remembered why I am not a smoker.  Will the introductory pages to Gentleman's Quarterly reveal a picture of Ted Danson in his underwear saying, "You've come a long way, hunk"?  Not likely.

Several pages later I was slapped in the face with another catchy phrase:  "If nature didn't, Warner's will."  I might have been convinced to buy this girdle, but the model was six feet tall and incredibly skinny.  If the body doesn't fit the image, let's just change the body and hope no one notices.

Staring at the skinny rear end of a model for "the first fitness equipment with amazing end results" will not make me rush out to buy the PTS Turbo 1000 exercise machine.  Instead, I am tempted to either set one on fire or hide in the nearest closet.   Women, if we are to complete our climb over the wall of inferiority, we must first quit selling the materials used to build the wall.  Are we promoting products or half-naked bodies?  What happens to individuality when the only thing that distinguishes one blonde from another is a caption?  We cannot blame men for feeling superior when magazines which portray women as mindless ninnies are prominently displayed at every grocery stand in America.

We've come a long way, baby?  Maybe.
                                                          Sincerely,
                                                                 Nailil A. Kunz

Beneath Chernobyl's Long Shadow

"Shooed off by noise and cries in one place, the huge and dreary shadow, like a bird, flies on to another, each time growing bigger and more ominous."  Valintin G. Rasputin's metaphor for Soviet environmental disasters aptly describes the current atmosphere in Byelorussia, where people speak bitterly of the "so-called gifts of Chernobyl."  Declared an ecological disaster area four and a half years after the terrible nuclear power plant explosion which occurred in Chernobyl just past 1 a.m. on April 26, 1986, the landscape of Byelorussia looks deceptively innocent and pure in the midsummer sunlight.

But the rolling countryside, a patchwork of pine forests and  potato fields, holds dark secrets, radioisotopes which emit poisonous rays undetectable by ordinary human senses such as sight, hearing, touch, smell, or taste.  Dermatologist Irina Zhukova, senior researcher at the Health Consultative Council, calls the radiation "a terrible legacy" which will haunt countless generations.  Unable to limit or control the contamination, the Byelorussian people feel a deep loss, a sense of despair rivaled only by their memories of World War Two, a war in which one in four Byelorussians died.

The central government offers little help in ameliorating the effects of Chernobyl.  For decades now, Soviet attention to  ecological problems has been static, consisting of monitoring without active intervention.  The state, and only the state, provides observation, then banks facts without informing the public.  The Academy of Sciences proposes good ideas, but is limited to science, and no agency exists to engineer practical solutions to environmental problems.  To make the situation worse, the president of the Academy of Sciences is Anatoly Petrovich Aleksandrov, director of the I.V. Kurchatov Institute for Atomic Energy, the largest institution of nuclear power research and development created by Stalin.  Aleksandrov has long been a powerful advocate of "the peaceful atom", a euphemism for nuclear power production.

Byelorussia, with a population of 2.2 million, received 75% of the total U.S.S.R. fallout from Chernobyl.  Thirty thousand people were evacuated from the most heavily contaminated zones soon after the tragedy, and people will not be able to live in those areas for hundreds of years to come.  Although only five years have passed since the tragedy began, changes in epidemiologic patterns of certain diseases have already been noted:  a sevenfold increase in anemia, tenfold more nose and mouth disorders, doubling of the number of deformed babies.

At the Scientific Research Institute of Oncology and Medical  Radiology outside Minsk, Dr. Jakov Madinov, a specialist in chest  oncology with an interest in mediastinal tumors, has begun a cancer registry program.  A new personal computer on his desk records data about comparative cases, including ages, living places, and types of cancer.  He expects the data to show whether or not Chernobyl really affects cancer rates.  Theoretically, physicians in the Soviet Union expect an increase in cancer rates in high-radiation zones, particularly thyroid cancer and leukemia among children, but not enough time has passed to show drastic evidence of change, and Madinov and his colleagues are reluctant to say whether a particular cancer was caused by Chernobyl.  Those at risk are screened periodically at a hematological center, and statistics indicate an increase in leukemia in one area 30 km. from Minsk.

Children who live in high-radiation zones now spend part of the year at camps and rest homes in non-radioactive areas; the Soviets believe that a rest from continuous exposure helps to protect the immune system from cumulative damage.  Recently 83 such children enjoyed a holiday at the sanitarium of the Minsk Polytechnical University, located in a radiologically clean zone on the shore of the Minsk Sea, an enormous fresh-water reservoir.  In a lush landscape of pine forests and grassy fields, the children received alternative therapies such as acupuncture, massage, and exercise to strengthen their health.

Daily life in Byelorussia now includes a heavy burden of  suspicion.  Radiology labs allow people to test food and throw away items with high levels of radioactivity.  Food and land have been tested in the area around Minsk, but only a few geiger counters of poor quality are available for use.  The lack of high-quality radiation metering devices remains a major problem in avoiding and recording exposure.

During the first few days after the Chernobyl explosion, only crude geiger counters were used at the power plant itself, and none were available in the affected countryside.  Many people were exposed to extraordinarily high levels of radiation through ignorance.  Five years later, the situation remains desperate.  "Even in Byelorussia, where each person should have his own radiation meter, we don't have enough geiger counters for government purposes," Soviet environmentalist Alexander Meleshko laments.

Young people face an uncertain future.  Anna, a pale and  beautiful second year student at the language institute in Minsk,  plans to become an English teacher.  She tries to put the Chernobyl disaster out of her mind, but she cannot help noticing the worry of her mother, a biologist.  "Since Chernobyl, we are always tired," Anna admits.  Formerly an energetic person, Anna's mother now must take a nap each day after work, and Anna and her friends also suffer from fatigue.  Anna's family loved to walk in the woods and pick mushrooms near the family dacha, but now the beautiful forests of Byelorussia are off-limits due to the possibility of high radiation levels.  "We do not know what to expect of the future," Anna says softly.

Despite a lack of laws permitting citizen action, some  Byelorussians have taken advantage of glasnost to alter government decision-making.  After Chernobyl, a new nuclear power station was planned for a site near Vitebsk, but the public was not informed.  Journalist Sergei Nauchik, son of a Communist Party boss in the region, learned of the power plant construction.  Nauchik didn't share the Party opinion of the benefits of nuclear power, so he organized a team of his friends to stand outside a department store handing out posters and asking people to sign a petition.  The group collected signatures from most of the residents of Vitebsk.  After officials agreed to stop construction, a public meeting was canceled.  Later a citizens' group traveled to the power plant site to verify that construction had indeed been halted.

Stopping new construction at the Vitebsk site, while a valuable activity, cannot lighten the shadow of Chernobyl.  Due mostly to the lack of good radiation monitoring equipment, five years after the tragedy began, scientists still have only a rough idea of the location of high-radiation zones, and although people have been evacuated from the most radioactive areas, the uneven deposition of wind-blown fallout means that dangerous amounts of radioisotopes may be found in close proximity to safe areas.  For hundreds of years, the people of Byelorussia will live under the raven-like shadow of radioactivity which stretches invisible wings over their beautiful but deadly forests and fields.  No one can change the past, but Byelorussians hope their tragedy will serve as a warning to the world so that others will not experience a similar fate.

Nonfiction books sell well.  Biographies of famous figures, descriptions of crimes, and how-to books fill the shelves of bookstores.  The nonfiction novel, a form made popular by Truman Capote's In Cold Blood and Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song, drew critical and reader interest to nonfiction.  If you have an idea for a nonfiction book, contact publishers before beginning your project.  Chapter Twelve contains a section on publishing books.  Follow the suggested sequence of activities, but send your book proposal to a number of publishers simultaneously.  Publishers like to make money, and you may not want to spend your time writing a book which will not sell.

Writers of nonfiction prose preserve historical information, praise high-quality books and performances, teach about faraway places, help sway public opinion on important issues, and help readers analyze and understand life.  The largest market available to beginning writers today is nonfiction, and skilled writers can earn a small but steady income from newspaper and magazine articles.  However, such writing must be clear, well-organized, and professional-looking.  Letters to the editor will almost always be published, but writers of longer pieces may want to contact the appropriate editor with a query letter to ascertain the chances of publication before beginning an article.

1. Define the term nonfiction.

2. List at least four types of nonfiction.

3. How can a journal be valuable to a writer? What historical might your journal have for others?

4.  How do letters differ from journal entries?

5. What two types of autobiographical writing are easy to publish?

6. Describe ways in which you can learn about review format.

7. Outline a travel article, then discuss why you chose to write about that place.

8. Why is attitude important in opinion writing?  Should an opinion article use only the author's beliefs, or should facts be part of the argument?  Why?

9. What role does metaphor play in the structure of nonfiction meant to be read by others?

Relax, concentrate on breathing deeply, and when you are ready, let your mind explore the types of nonfiction prose you enjoy reading.  Remember particular articles and books, and think about how those writings enabled you to grow.  When you come back to reality, answer the following questions in your journal.

1.  Do you keep a journal?  Would you like to?  How could you make your journal into a unique historical record?

2.  Do you write letters?  How might you make your letters interesting to future generations as well as to the recipient?

3.  List the names of unusual people you know, then next to each name jot down a few words about why that person unusual.  Choose one person, perhaps yourself, to focus on for a biographical article.

4.  Do you like books?  Films?  Plays?  Music?  Read reviews in your local newspaper, The New Yorker magazine, The New York Times Book Review, Bloomsbury Review, and other publications.  Study the review format, then write a review of a book, film, play, or restaurant.

5.  What places do you know best?  Read travel articles in your local newspaper, Outside magazine, Granta, and other publications.  Study the format of travel articles, then write about a trip you loved or hated.  As an alternative, write a local color piece about some aspect of life in your hometown.

6.  What really makes you angry?  Study the "Letters to the Editor" column in your local newspaper.  How long are the published letters?  Notice that many of them are disorganized, rambling, and difficult to read.  Write a short opinion piece which states the problem which angers you in a clear and logical fashion and proposes a solution.