Truth isn't stranger than fiction

. I've been listening to David Sedaris's new book on my iPod as I ride my bike to school, to yoga, to the grocery store, and most often the coffee shop. If he has taught me anything it is that life should be embellished. As a journalist I was taught not to lie. And for good reason. Of course, to say that I don't embellish would itself be a lie. I try to make stories that on their own would be boring into something interesting. To do that I tell white lies. I make it seem like student politics are really interesting, or that the latest internet application really is going to change the world. I make it seem like the opposing forces on either side of a particular debate really hate each other, directing their quotes as attacks on each other when in fact neither of them think much about the other. I create artificial narratives so that people will care. These are lies in the most modest sense of the word. To assume that the world of writing is "lie free" or "always truthful" is a misconception. While writing his famous pastoral, Walden, Thoreau was playing the part of a liar. He did live in an old rickety cabin near Walden pond. He did see ants creating a life for themselves, and witness the constant creep of the urbanization that threatened his little paradise. But to say he was roughing it is an exaggeration. Emerson's mother did his laundry and fed him on a regular basis. He frequented the town to visit his friends and talk over drinks of whiskey at the local pub. Just because he wasn't actually "roughing it" as the book proclaims, does that make it any less important? His story is one of the most beloved pastoral masterpieces of the last century and it came because Henry was willing to embellish, to lie. Thoreau seems to thrown out the old adage that truth is stranger than fiction. In many ways it is the other way around. We can learn more about life by lying our way through it.
So when I sit down every night, saturated with the days events and Sedaris's voice running through my head I am inclined to embellish, to lie my way through my writing. None of freinds will hang out with me ever since I quit smoking pot, because really that is all we ever had in common. I find myself searching porn sites late at night trying to find girls that resemble my ex-girlfriend. I have pages and pages of unpublished stories that no one will ever read, exept maybe if I become famous and some archivist digs through all my old hard drives. These aren't whole truths; but they are not flat out lies either. They're somewhere in between. Artistic embellishments we will call them.
To assume that we grab ideas ideas out of thin air, that our creative minds are so powerful that they are able to conjure up brilliantly thought out realities is absurd. Even the most fantastical of stories have their routes in fact, and most often contain elements of the biographical. Sedaris and Thoreau are great examples. By telling half-truths they reveal something about the world previously undiscovered. Their friends and perhaps the greater public might hate them for lying, or even more likely for revealing the truth. I can't remember the quotation exactly and I can't seem to find in my desk anywhere, but I think Jane Smiley once said something to effect "good writers won't have any friends." The underlying principle being that good writing should reveal uncomfortable truths about the world, and the people around you. In a round about way, it should reveal the truth through lying.