I have spent the last 50 years of my life believing that J. Frank Dobie first said “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.” Until this morning, that is.
I read Prof. Brands essay “Alternative History.” Coming to an understanding of how the human memory is now thought to work, saving the expenditure of calories by filling in holes with perceived recall of things and events that may or may not have actually been or happened to make sense of it all before sending it back into areas of the brain for later retrieval, I decided to spent a little time this morning on my computer and its linkage to the modern version of the Library at Alexandria, the internet, to find out exactly what Prof. Dobie said in this regard before putting it down in my Comment.
Lo and behold. I find that this may have been said by Mark Twain, who of course was really Samuel Clemens, if for no other reason than it sounded like something he might have said. Or it may not have.
So if not from Twain’s lips, or at least from Clemens’ brain, or vice versa. While I can’t prove that Twain ever said it, you can’t disprove that Twain didn’t speak it or that Clemens didn’t think it. Just as “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” [Perhaps Irish physicist William Wright may have written something like this in 1888, but more recently Carl Sagan and Martin Rees have spoken and written cosmologically about this, do I dare say, principle. I actually first heard an old Austin police detective speak it.]
So what if I just write that my saying “never let the truth get in the way of a good story” must have surely been based upon an old Irish proverb, because such proverbs are often the source of great wisdom? Not because it did, but just because the Emerald Isle is a good place to park it this morning because I have no present inclination to expend more time and energy on the quest for its origin.
Which brings to mind “laziness.” I suspect that sometimes what gets passed off as historical storytelling or even alternative history and surely a lot of fiction, depending on the credentials and reputation of the teller, comes from the laziness that I have just exhibited. I am not here attributing laziness to the late Larry McMurtry, one of my favorite writers of fiction, but McMurty wrote in his non-fictional “In a Narrow Grave” that he preferred writing fiction to non-fiction, because it was easier.
But is laziness in speech and writing lying? It, as most things, depends on context. Just as lying most often is thought of as springing from the malicious intent of trying to get someone else to act to one’s advantage or the other’s disadvantage. But what about the so-called “white lie” often uttered with the benevolent or benign intent to spare another’s feelings?
Too many questions this morning. Not enough answers.
I have spent the last 50 years of my life believing that J. Frank Dobie first said “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.” Until this morning, that is.
I read Prof. Brands essay “Alternative History.” Coming to an understanding of how the human memory is now thought to work, saving the expenditure of calories by filling in holes with perceived recall of things and events that may or may not have actually been or happened to make sense of it all before sending it back into areas of the brain for later retrieval, I decided to spent a little time this morning on my computer and its linkage to the modern version of the Library at Alexandria, the internet, to find out exactly what Prof. Dobie said in this regard before putting it down in my Comment.
Lo and behold. I find that this may have been said by Mark Twain, who of course was really Samuel Clemens, if for no other reason than it sounded like something he might have said. Or it may not have.
So if not from Twain’s lips, or at least from Clemens’ brain, or vice versa. While I can’t prove that Twain ever said it, you can’t disprove that Twain didn’t speak it or that Clemens didn’t think it. Just as “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” [Perhaps Irish physicist William Wright may have written something like this in 1888, but more recently Carl Sagan and Martin Rees have spoken and written cosmologically about this, do I dare say, principle. I actually first heard an old Austin police detective speak it.]
So what if I just write that my saying “never let the truth get in the way of a good story” must have surely been based upon an old Irish proverb, because such proverbs are often the source of great wisdom? Not because it did, but just because the Emerald Isle is a good place to park it this morning because I have no present inclination to expend more time and energy on the quest for its origin.
Which brings to mind “laziness.” I suspect that sometimes what gets passed off as historical storytelling or even alternative history and surely a lot of fiction, depending on the credentials and reputation of the teller, comes from the laziness that I have just exhibited. I am not here attributing laziness to the late Larry McMurtry, one of my favorite writers of fiction, but McMurty wrote in his non-fictional “In a Narrow Grave” that he preferred writing fiction to non-fiction, because it was easier.
But is laziness in speech and writing lying? It, as most things, depends on context. Just as lying most often is thought of as springing from the malicious intent of trying to get someone else to act to one’s advantage or the other’s disadvantage. But what about the so-called “white lie” often uttered with the benevolent or benign intent to spare another’s feelings?
Too many questions this morning. Not enough answers.