Truth or Fiction

Jon Carroll takes on The New Republic's expose on David Sedaris: I am just amazed that anyone thought David Sedaris' stories were literally true. I am even more amazed that the New Republic would publish a lengthy article "proving" that David Sedaris' stories were not literally true. Exaggerated for comic effect, even. Imagine that.

Next you'll be telling me that the bed never really did fall on James Thurber's father, or that Ian Frazier did not really marry his sister, or that Dave Barry's teenage son did not say all the things that he is alleged to have said in "My Teenage Son's Goal in Life Is to Make Me Feel 3,500 Years Old." Give me a grant, and I could fill the pages of the New Republic for just ever.

Stories are stories. They have a beginning, a middle and an end. People drop perfectly formed bon mots at just the appropriate time. Life is life. Events in life do not have a tidy structure, and often the beginning is not entirely clear and the end is not entirely neat. Some things in life just trail off. Hard to get a punchy end out of "I dunno, I guess, we saw each other a few times more, and I fixed her tire, but then, you know, there was the Cleveland thing."