{"id":41630,"date":"2024-06-22T12:41:59","date_gmt":"2024-06-22T19:41:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=41630"},"modified":"2026-06-05T11:49:05","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T11:49:05","slug":"the-lifespan-of-a-fact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/the-lifespan-of-a-fact\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Lifespan of a Fact’ — Fun Words, Now Playing in Berkeley"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"the-lifespan-of-a-fact\"<\/a>
“The Lifespan of a Fact” will open Wednesday at the Aurora Theater in Berkeley. Here, the word Fact in chalk in the theater lobby for the show’s preview. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Christina came to town this weekend to compete in the Westwords crossword (yes, crossword) tournament<\/a> in Berkeley tomorrow.<\/p>\n

I like it when my daughter comes to visit, so I scrambled around for something to keep her entertained and, I hoped, wanting to come back.<\/p>\n

And there it was on the Visit Berkeley website: the first night of previews of “The Lifespan of a Fact,” a rolickingly good time of a play inspired<\/a> by the book of the same name.<\/p>\n

The play makes good fun of a stand-off between essayist John D’Agata and a young copy checker, Jim Fingal, who was assigned to verify the many iffy facts in D’Agata’s essay about a teenage suicide in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n

Good natured but dead serious, the play raises questions that writers of nonfiction are constantly asking themselves and each other — how faithful must a memoirist or essayist be to the facts?<\/p>\n

I write essays — hundreds of them are posted on this website — but before I was an essayist, I was a journalist. I worked on newspapers and magazines where facts were facts and you had to get them right or suffer the humiliation of a printed correction in the newspaper.<\/p>\n

As a result, as Christina and I took in this play from our front row seats at the Aurora Theater in Berkeley last night, I had little sympathy for the licentious lyricism of the D’Agata character. I’m down with the fact-checking, reality-confirming Jim Fingal.<\/p>\n

Facts matter to me. But so does the “deeper truth” that the D’Agata character so eloquently defends in this play. So, for me, the beauty of nonfiction — the creative kind — is that it must cleave to factual truth at the same time it feels its way toward those deeper truths.<\/p>\n

Facts are boney and unforgiving. But put some well chosen words around those bones and you’ve got something lumpy but beautiful.<\/p>\n

If you can’t get tickets for the words being thrown around at the Aurora Theater this weekend, don’t forget, there will be crosswords aplenty\u00a0 at the tournament over on University Avenue.<\/p>\n

More about the literary life at, “John Donne, Meet Leonard Cohen — And Send Us a Song From the Mystery Beyond.”<\/a><\/em> Also at, “Writing Retreat Report: I Got Some Work Done. Thanks for Holding Me Accountable.”<\/a>\u00a0 And at, “The Rhetorician in the White House — Or, How I Learned to Love the Passive Voice.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"the-lifespan-of-a-fact\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Good natured but dead serious, “The Lifespan of a Fact,” raises questions that writers of nonfiction are constantly asking themselves.\u00a0 Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48743,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[146,2865,1483,2866,34,1891,82,2867,2868],"class_list":["post-41630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-on-writing-reading","tag-christina","tag-creative-nonfiction","tag-crosswords","tag-dagata","tag-dont-miss","tag-essays","tag-on-the-funny-side","tag-the-lifespan-of-a-fact","tag-theater"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41630"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48745,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41630\/revisions\/48745"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}