August 13 2009

Text By Greg Fallis

Truth is stranger than fiction. You hear that all the time, as if it's some sort of revelation—as if some deep secret meaning of the universe has been revealed. Truth is stranger than fiction.

Well, yeah. Of course truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense. Truth is under no such obligation. Truth just tumbles along, like a drunk banging away blindfolded at an empty pinata. It swoops and darts unpredictably, sometimes with the grace of a barn swallow hawking for mosquitoes on a summer night, sometimes twitching fitfully like an epileptic butterfly. In fiction, the authorial hand can pause now and then to consider for a moment whether an audience will actually believe what it sees right in front of it. Truth has no regard for the audience.

Truth is sure enough stranger than fiction, make no mistake. Today truth is dressed in a clown's costume and putting up balloons in a suburban back yard in Janesville, Wisconsin, population 62,130, home of the first established 4-H youth fair in the U.S.