by Reg Green
In a recent OUCH! I quoted Evelyn Waugh’s justification for tinkering with the facts to make a better story:
“A writer is not really content to leave any experience in the amorphous haphazard condition in which life presents it.”
But, as I found out this week, when reading “One Man’s Chorus” by Anthony Burgess, a reshaping of events may not merely be useful but positively holy. As he put it, it can convert “the dull bread of daily life ….. into the eucharistic host of timeless beauty.”
It’s a thought that will come in handy the next time one of my carping children says something like, “When you told that story last time, Dad, it was Roger Moore, not Sean Connery, who said, ‘It is I who should be grateful to you, Reg.’ “
