Word: fictions
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...said to have backfired, making a simple photograph political. As Row said in an e-mail message, if the designers felt a picture mentioning Serbia "was too volatile for a Harvard audience, they should have chosen another image from the University Archives--an undoctored image--rather than present fiction as fact...
There's a reason the Lewinsky scandal was so riveting: it was a true story that was better scripted than fiction. It began as John Grisham, with big-haired, twangy-voiced Paula Jones alleging sexual improprieties in a Little Rock hotel room. It ended as Shakespeare, with a powerful leader nearly felled by a tragic flaw. And it was propelled by characters a Hollywood screenwriter would kill to have dreamed up: the giggling intern, the treacherous best friend...
Fact: Johannes Vermeer (1632-75) was a Dutch painter with a sketchy biography and exacting pictures that continue to astonish more than three centuries after his death. Fiction: an illiterate girl named Greit, 17, a servant in the Vermeer household, was the model for the artist's celebrated portrait Girl with a Pearl Earring...
Tracy Chevalier is cautious with fact and adventurous with fiction in her novel, aptly titled Girl with a Pearl Earring (Dutton; 240 pages; $23.95). Vermeer's activities as an art dealer and tavern operator are not pushed further than the thready historical record. Greit, on the other hand, is a full literary creation with the candid radiance of the Vermeer canvas. Through her eyes, we also get a close, bottom-up perspective on life in the city of Delft at a time when Holland was a leading maritime nation...
...Peanut Butter in My Chocolate and Cassie's Blue Cotton Candy with Sprinkles and the particularly lazy Vanilla. I found myself speaking in a loud, pastoral voice, saying, "My friend is amazingly talented, huh? Someone who perhaps should quit his day job and write a serious piece of literary fiction. He is what I believe is called a writer's writer." The woman behind the counter agreed, in that she didn't say anything. But she did tell me that my ice cream name stood out from the hundreds of entries, making it to the short list of five...