I no longer believe what I read in books.
Unless, of course, the text states clearly that every word is made up, a product of the author’s imagination. I especially take notice when a novelist deploys that oft-used legal disclaimer, the one that says, “Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.”
Sure it is. That statement makes me perk up like a dog that has heard a distant whistle from a cruel and deceitful master. It means truth is about to appear in some elegant and artful disguise.
As for all those dusty “facts” piled in the vast remaindered bin known as nonfiction, well, I’ve exhumed quite a few such items in this autumn of foraging and funerals, and so many have proven to be false that I’ve lost faith in their authenticity. Along the dim corridors of the secret world I’ve come to know best, only the so-called inventions of fiction have ever shed any light of revelation.
But with light come shadows, and therein lies the rub. Shadows hide danger. They conceal death, even love. They must often be avoided, but never ignored. I arrived at these conclusions only recently, although I now suspect that at some deeper level I’ve known their truth all along.
Let me tell you why …