Javier Cercas’s Soldiers of Salamis was really unique in how it seemed to blur lines between reality, history, and fiction and pose interesting questions about knowability in the process. Throughout the first part, I felt that the book was more “lifelike” than many of the others I’ve read, probably because it takes place more recently and Cercas’s experiences seemed more “ordinary” compared to Amulet, for example. I actually chose to deliberately not Google whether things or people were real or not, like how Bolaño seemed to argue that the embellished truth can be more “real” than the actual truth, and that reality itself betrays the narrative reality seems to provide at times.

I figured that Cercas wanted to convey that many details of history are to an extent unknowable, but there were broad chronological ideas, narratives, or lessons to be found within them. Those ideas and narratives are usually what we mostly take away from history as opposed to just records of what happens, just as Cercas (the narrator) wanted to make a point about war in his book, which was possibly best conveyed through revising his interview with Miralles. History might only be as knowable as witnesses want it to be, but that might show that our understanding of “real history” as a complex set of narratives is fundamentally incomplete, and it wants to be filled. In that sense, to answer the lecture’s questions, I felt that the lies in the fictional recount of Mazas’s experience serve to promote that broad narrative and there are consequences of that. It won’t be a beacon of historical accuracy, but the book in itself contributes something to the discourse of commemorating and remembering the War.

I also found myself questioning whether the facts Cercas presented were real or not really frequently, and I felt that this confusion was deliberate. Cercas’s choice to make the narrator have the same thing as him or to title the second part the same as the novel encouraged me to look deeper at this division between fiction and reality. There are some “easier” facts to verify, like how Sanchez Mazas and Javier Cercas were real people, but also falsehoods, like Javier’s initial description of his life, which I thought made clear to me that not everything in the story was strictly true. That said, as soon as Part 2 began, my interest in distinguishing between truth and fiction seemed to wane as though it diminished in importance. I think that the main thing I took away was an increased awareness of how fiction pretending to be real is an avenue into reality.

My question this week is that Bolaño says that “All good tales are true tales, at least for those who read them, which is all that matters.” What is the nature of this truth?