About This Book
In this collection of stories, Lowell Tollefson presents a unique challenge to the modern imagination concerning the relationship between the historiographer and the fiction writer. Is historical truth represented by the scientific gathering and ordered presentation of individual facts, or can it, indeed must it, be apprehended through an emotionally or morally unified "picture," as in the narratives of the Bible, the Icelandic sagas, the Roman historians, and the best of modern fiction? Mr. Tollefson, in his fictional portrayal of contemporary social life and his insistence on emphasizing aesthetic unity rather than the narrative sequencing of events, places this issue squarely before the reader. Facts, he insists, whether fictional or real, must be grouped in accordance with their emotional, rather than time specific, relationships, if the world is to be recreated as people have lived and felt it. That he does this without obfuscation or a labored striving after effect is a demonstration of his ability as a storyteller.
