Thom reviewed The Lifespan of a Fact by John D'Agata
Review of 'The Lifespan of a Fact' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
I think it was a 2012 "book a day" calendar that had this, and the blurb sounded interesting. The book was certainly different, but I came away not liking either of these guys.
This is an article, and a conversation about that article between the author and the magazine-hired fact checker. Both are hard-headed, and both go where they don't belong (the author changing facts on a whim and being a right prig to the the fact-checker; the fact-checker objecting to stuff that isn't a fact in the first place, and not keeping the story in context). The small portion of the book that is their conversation about what constitutes a fictional story, a factual account, and an "essay" is interesting. The rest has a few crumbs of interest, but in general is forgettable.
I highly doubt a fact checker would parse one sentence at a time and then check …
I think it was a 2012 "book a day" calendar that had this, and the blurb sounded interesting. The book was certainly different, but I came away not liking either of these guys.
This is an article, and a conversation about that article between the author and the magazine-hired fact checker. Both are hard-headed, and both go where they don't belong (the author changing facts on a whim and being a right prig to the the fact-checker; the fact-checker objecting to stuff that isn't a fact in the first place, and not keeping the story in context). The small portion of the book that is their conversation about what constitutes a fictional story, a factual account, and an "essay" is interesting. The rest has a few crumbs of interest, but in general is forgettable.
I highly doubt a fact checker would parse one sentence at a time and then check the veracity without reading the entire article first, so the whole process of "fact checking" as presented here is likely to be untrue.