“The reason that truth is stranger than fiction is that fiction has to have a rational thread
running through it in order to be believable, whereas reality may be totally irrational.”
— Sydney J. Harris (1917-1986)
“The main difference between living people and fictitious characters is that the writer takes
great pains to give the characters coherence and inner unity, whereas the living people may go
to extremes of incoherence because their physical existence holds them together.”
— Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929)
The idea behind this phrase is that the strangest things that one could possibly imagine actually happen in real life (though oftentimes they seem beyond our powers of imagination). There is no need to invent them. Like the sea urchin depicted in the graphic at the top of this Web page, if you did invent them, people would say that they are too far-fetched to really be true. You must have made them up.
If you had to reduce the five-word phrase “truth is stranger than fiction” into a single word, the best single word in the English language would probably be irony. The dictionary says that irony means “incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs.” In other words, the unexpected. But the concept of irony also has a bittersweet quality to it. Bittersweet, as in the short stories of the American writer known as O. Henry and the Russian idea of “laughter through tears” that characterize the writings of Anton Chekhov and others.
One special subcategory of Truth is Stranger than Fiction (TISTF, for short, pronounced “tistiff”) relates specifically to names of people. Here are some examples:
Newsweek magazine announced some time ago the death of a former boxing champion at the age of 75. He was the only boxer to hold three world titles at the same time — featherweight, lightweight and welterweight. The obituary said that he was considered by many to be “pound for pound, the greatest fighter in boxing history,” partly because of his ability to punch relentlessly. His last name — the name he was apparently born with — was Armstrong. He was Henry Armstrong.
The Religious News Service announced a while back that a particular religious magazine was going to cease publication with its January issue. The name of the magazine was Eternity.
Not long after that, Time magazine had an article about a man who was hired to be president of baseball’s National League. The appointment was notable because of the man’s race. He became the highest ranking black in the sport. His last name is White. (That’s former National League President Bill White.) So the headline read, “White Is Game’s Highest Ranking Black.”
The same year, employees of one of Domino’s pizza stores had an interesting experience. At the same time that the company’s television advertising featured a mythical character named the “Noid,” a sort of gremlin who delays deliveries and carries a gun that can turn pizza ice cold, its store in a town called Chamblee, Georgia was held up at gunpoint by a 22-year-old man whose name was actually Kenneth Noid. Even more remarkably perhaps, the motive for the hold-up had nothing to do with the similarity in names.
In the same vein, several years ago (in late January 1992), we heard on the radio that a Burger King franchise was held up by a man who was actually named Ronald McDonald, the name of the fictional clown who promotes Burger King’s main rival.
If any of this sounds funny, consider the announcement by cable television channel HBO (that stands for Home Box Office) about a new 24-hour all-comedy channel. The vice president in charge of developing original programming for the channel — no kidding — is named Stuart Smiley.
When a word in one language sounds funny in another language because of its meaning in yet a third language, the item is a definite candidate for the TISTF file. For a short time in 1989, the prime minister of Japan, the top-ranking politician in the country, was actually surnamed Uno. Uno, of course, is Spanish for the word one. It has come into the English language through the term numero uno or number one. So the Numero Uno in Japan for a time was indeed Uno.
Politicians could actually form their own subcategory within the category under discussion. In addition to Prime Minister Uno, consider two American Congressmen previously in the news. First there was an Atlanta Republican convicted for lying to a grand jury about criminal activity. His name is Patrick Swindall, which when pronounced quickly sounds just like the word “swindle,” meaning to cheat or defraud, which is exactly what the Congressman did.
Then there is the case of another U.S. Congressman who around the same time was said to have violently accosted a Peace Corps worker overseas, reportedly trying to rape her in a car. He denied the accusation but the report is consistent with accounts of behavior observed by others. His name is Gus Savage. Savage, of course, means violent, uncivilized and vicious, which is exactly what Gus Savage seems to be. (While Swindall was a white Republican, Savage is a black Democrat. TISTF respects no boundaries, political, cultural, ethnic or any other.)
Finally, the author of a book on consumer credit received a letter in November 1989 from a convicted felon who was serving time in prison for a variety of white-collar crimes relating to credit fraud. His last name is Crook. It is spelled exactly the same as the synonym for thief: c-r-o-o-k.
If he used his time in prison to earn a law degree by correspondence, he could go into partnership with the two Congressmen mentioned above. Their firm would be called Savage, Swindall and Crook. Imagine the clients they could represent and the sight of the legal documents they would prepare with the firm name at the top. That would truly be stranger than fiction.
We welcome your submissions for our TISTF files. More material will be posted in the future.
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