That being said, I would like to bring up Tim O’Brien’s perspective on truth per “The Things They Carried,” which I think bears some similarity to what you’re saying. In one of his stories, he wrote about how a lie can be truer than the truth, and visa versa. O’Brien gave an example in which he describes the type of story that sometimes came out of Vietnam (he is a Vietnam vet and all his writings are based on or around that experience). He talks about the story of how a soldier threw himself on a grenade and absorbed the blast, giving his own life to save the life of his comrades. This sort of thing did factually happen, but, to O’Brien’s point, to tell that as a Vietnam story is a lie because it didn’t represent the truth of the Vietnam experience.

O’Brien then gives an alternative story in which a soldier throws himself on a grenade to save his comrades but the grenade ends up killing everyone anyway. And as all the soldiers lay on the ground dying, one of them turns to the one who threw himself on the grenade and says, “That was pointless.” Even though this story is a lie, it is truer than the story that actually happened.

Actually, now I think I understand what you were saying in your original post; I was just so excited to write down the Tim O’Brien bit that I didn’t think about what you wrote.