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From A True Story: Lucian's Tale Retold...
WHERE'S MY NOBEL?
Therefore and wherefore and whatfrom, when I read all those other writers, there’s no way I can very well condemn them for straying from the straight and narrow because those variances seem to be their stock in trade, their common denominator in methodical madness. It’s purely how they write — even among those whose heady words are devoted to the lofty pursuit of philosophy.
With that in mind, I most surely do not want to be left out. I like to think of myself as good as any of that lot and I’d like to be remembered as an exceptionally talented tale-spinner. Unique among them. If that ilk can get away with it, so most certainly can I.
And even outmeasure them.
To cut to the chase, here’s the bottom line: I, most definitively, have nothing true to relate. Even now. My life’s totally nondescript. It’s truly unremarkable. I’ve never had so much as even a semi-marvelous occurrence so I’ve got as much right as that whole bunch of reprobates to make stuff up. Right now I need to mention (if I haven’t done that yet — I forget sometimes) that I consider myself unquestionably to be more than a tad better than them (even if I tend to repeat myself). Modest, humble man that I am. I stake my claim to being an honest liar. You heard that here first. If you’ve got to believe just one thing I write, you can bet your life that I’m lying. (Honest to the gods!) In this way, you cannot — I repeat cannot — criticize me for telling you one thing and doing — not to mention meaning — another. And don’t get me started on meaning. You know very well that bugger is far from an absolute. What I mean can be taken every which way by each and every reader. All that meaning crap remains fully in the eye of the beholder. (Do I really mean what I say and do I say what I mean? Am I meaning to be just, or being justly mean?) And, by the way, is meaning ill-spirited and petty or good-natured and beneficent? A mean mean? Or something halfway in between?
But enough of the pseudo-philosophizing and jiggering with language. Just know that everything’s above board and on the table. (All that stuff laid out across the table to eat is just a figment of my overworked imagination. Be prepared to go hungry for reality. But, I’ll tell you, your hunger, and thirst, will not go without many scenes of feasting and revelry herein. Stoics are not us.)
So without further ado, bear in mind and get it through your thick skull, that I write about things that I’ve never seen nor heard from anyone else. (I’m solely to blame. And I might be guilty of much, but literary theft is not among my earthly crimes.) All that shit never existed, and, moreover, could never exist.
Not to be too immodest, but I am the great god of the unreal.
Think of a wizard who concocts potions that will alter your mind. You now have a colloidal suspension to give your disbelief. A negative to develop.
So: A word to the wise: Caveat lector: Don’t believe all that you read. (And don’t read all that you believe.) Nor believe what you believe. (Nor read what you read.) Who said that? (Not the guy behind the curtain.)
Fact and fabulous.
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