Do novels need Bibliographies?

Norman Mailer's new novel "The Castle in the Forest," includes a list of 126 authors and titles that enriched the book.

Michael Crichton's new novel, "Next," contains a seven-page bibliography listing 36 books that Crichton read while researching the book, along with citations for 12 articles published in newspapers or other publications and 12 Internet sources.

As reported in the International Herald Tribune article "Literature: Do novels really need bibliographies?", this seems to be the trend.

In todays litigious society, is this really necessary?

It seems fiction will likely be more true then memoirs, go figure...

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