Author Lee Gutkind is no stranger to the mysteries of life, especially when it comes to writing about them.
Over the years, Gutkind has immersed himself in the lives of Major League Baseball umpires, near-death organ transplant patients, a boy dealing with the death of a friend and most recently, robots and their creators.
Gutkind will visit the Fresno State campus Friday, May 4 to read from his new book, “Almost Human: Making Robots Think,� which takes a close look at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.
His creativity has not only uncovered truths for the creative nonfiction genre, but has led to the kind of speculation that often can come from being a well-known author.
Gutkind’s nickname, “The Godfather of Creative Nonfiction,� often results in gossip among writers.
The name stuck and Gutkind̢۪s name is now synonymous with this alias. This has led some readers to see Gutkind as being egotistical.
“It’s a misconception,� said Eric Parker, a graduate student in Fresno State’s Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing.
Parker, who took a class from Gutkind last summer in Spain and recently interviewed him for FresnoFamous.com, said Gutkind is accessible and a great person to work with.
“He’s a vibrant person … with a lot of energy,� said Parker, who is also a member of the San Joaquin Literary Association — the student group co-hosting Gutkind’s visit. “He’s at a point in his life where he is completely stable.�
As for the “godfather� name, Gutkind only uses it as a way to laugh off a title that was meant to intimidate and belittle him and his work, as he explains in his essay, “The Creative Nonfiction Police.�
As a genre, creative nonfiction has had its skeptics. Vanity Fair magazine in 1997 downplayed creative nonfiction as nothing more than “confessional writing written
by navel gazers.� In the article, Gutkind was scornfully called the “godfather� of what was said to be nothing more than self-absorbed diary writing.
Gutkind, in his response essay, said that the Vanity Fair article had ignored “the significant information-oriented work� that had been done by many of his colleagues.
Many of Gutkind̢۪s works center on the same information-gathering techniques that an everyday journalist uses, but with the storytelling techniques of a literary writer. These journalistic values inspired Gutkind to write about others.
While Gutkind has found a method of journalism mixed with a writing style that works for him, the godfather does not claim to be the “police� of the genre.
“The gospel according to Lee Gutkind or anyone else doesn’t and shouldn’t exist,� Gutkind wrote in “The Creative Nonfiction Police.�
Gutkind will speak Friday at 7:30 p.m. in the Peters Education Center.