What is the relationship between truth and accuracy? The Lifespan of a Fact reviewed

At the time, I’m sure it all seemed absolutely hilarious. It was in 2012 that W.W. Norton first published The Lifespan of a Fact, co-written by the essayist John D’Agata and his one-time fact-checker Jim Fingal. The book consists of an essay by D’Agata, ‘What Happens There’ — which tells the story of the death of a 16-year-old, Levi Presley, who killed himself by jumping from the Stratosphere Hotel in Las Vegas — plus Fingal’s meticulous marginal notes and comments. (The essay was apparently written for Harper’s magazine in 2003, which rejected it because of factual inaccuracies: it was eventually published in the magazine The Believer, fact-checked by Fingal, in 2010.)

The book was a serious experiment in postmodern playfulness, a Socratic dialogue irl — there really was, it seems, a Levi Presley, who killed himself by suicide — and last year it became a Broadway play, starring Daniel Radcliffe, who interned at the New Yorker in order to get a feel for the whole fact-checking thing. Hence, presumably, the reissue of the book. Alas, what seemed very funny in 2012 now seems both all too familiar and utterly depressing.

‘I have taken some liberties in the essay here and there,’ writes D’Agata, justifying himself to Fingal, ‘but none of them are harmful.’ And: ‘I’m not running for public office. I’m trying to write something that’s interesting to read.’ In 2019, when the people who do run for public office — and who are indeed appointed to the highest public office — routinely lie and take liberties, the book seems more like the final rehearsal of some ancient arcane arguments than a daring exploration of the contested territory where truth meets lies. There is no longer any contest: the preening postmodern self-publicists won; all those dreary fact-checking gainsayers are the losers. Sad.