Tuesday, March 20, 2012

A Point to Ponder

Anchorage--


"Real life is messy.    And as a general rule, the more theatrical the story you hear, and the more it divides the world into goodies vs baddies, the less reliable that story is going to be....One of the central problems with narrative nonfiction is that the best narratives aren't messy and complicated, while nonfiction nearly always is."


--Felix Salmon, commenting on inaccuracies exposed in theatrical performer Mike Daisey's monologue on working conditions of Chinese factory workers manufacturing Apple products after the monologue was presented as fact on the radio program "This American Life" (which then retracted the broadcast).   

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