Liar's Paradox

“Nothing in this book is true.” If that’s the truth, it’s a lie and if that’s a lie, it’s the truth. It’s a truth that lies to us, and a lie that tells us the truth.

Why would Vonnegut choose to start a book off as such? Personally, I thought it was a great hook. It was not because he openly admitted to lying; for a work of fiction, that would be simply stating the obvious. Rather, it was the sheer absoluteness and certainty of the statement that poked at me. It made me curious, and immediately doubtful- an entire book cannot be written out of entire lies. Even when we read a fantasy novel like Harry Potter, we always run into “truths”; there is no way around it. So, what I got out of the statement was that there was perhaps more truth to the book than what would be obvious to a reader. Vonnegut set up the book so that a reader is immediately tempted to actively search for “truths” in the book that supposedly has none.

What is it about the idea of absolute lies that makes us so skeptical? What about absolute truths? I think I would be equally fascinated if a book opens saying, “Everything in this book is true.” Not only because the writer is already expecting the readers to doubt the facts in the book, which sets an immediate believe-it-or-not air about it, but also because I don’t think a book can really be entirely true. Even reporting a single incident is somewhat inherently biased because how we perceive an incident varies from one person to another. And then, the story again trickles through another filter of perception when a reader reads the writer’s report of the incident. So, is it ever possible to reach that unadulterated truth? Does it even exist?

I think in the end, it’s all just a mesh of truths and lies. But that doesn’t put me off (does that make me a Bokononist?). I think it keeps things interesting. Besides, what’s encouraging is that whether it is a “truth” or a “lie”, we do learn something new through each of them. Truth is one thing, reality is another.

*Image downloaded from:

http://www.unlearning101.com/fuhgetaboutit_the_art_of_/2011/03/you-can-embrace-ambiguity-true-or-false.html