note from B. C. Duvall  –  how to read this kind of writing

a large clump of interconnected floating water hyacinths as in Santisima Cruz

"even what floats by hypnotically in the caño is otherworldly.
at the moment the caño in front of the house, our little bayou offshoot of the river,
slowly and silently drags by a fantastic assortment, dozens of plastic bags bloated with air;
whole hyacinth lily-pads in clumps sailing past like little boats tied together, masts beaten and broken;
entire painted signs off buildings; miniature day-glo green tennis balls that turn out to be limes, or guavas."

How to read this kind of writing:

Some works of historical fiction are heavily invented, the present one lightly. But only the original real participants in the events here fictionally described will know which statements, paragraphs and chapters have been the few made up. Most of the original characters described in the Dr.'s original 1994 diary are still alive today in 2017, but almost all names were changed by the Dr. in his 1998 publication, and even more changes have been made for this 'look at' that 1998 work of fiction.

And also, a new kind of lying has been invented and added to the history of fiction-writing technique, in order to portray the original diary's characters in photos. The Dr.'s 1998 work was not illustrated, but our 'look at' it is. Just as in a quasi-fictional movie story based on a real-life person, some chosen actor must portray that person, so in the present story we likewise wanted 'actors' to show Dr. Lorenzo and other original characters visually in photos. Instead of using photos of Hollywood or other 'actors', however, we have used the real photos of the real original characters, letting the real original characters 'play' their fictional counterparts in our 'look'. For example, the real-life character on whom the quasi-made-up character of mj lorenzo is based is still alive, but mj lorenzo is not his name; and yet we use the real photos of the real person to portray the changed-name book character, mj lorenzo, who is loosely and fictionally based on the real person; and we have done this for many of the original events' original participants.

Almost all names in the present story (and other volumes of  a look, too) may have been changed, therefore; but, where characters are based on real-life people, throughout the various volumes of  a look, these people's photos -- in almost all cases -- have been used to represent their fictional made-up-name counterparts. Readers who do not know these original people do not necessarily have to understand any of this. Only the original people and their friends and families do, so they can rightly and properly say, if somebody's fictional character does something they would never have done, 'It's fiction'.

It's a new approach to fiction, a new way to show characters in images.

But, surprisingly, it is not entirely new. In the movie Contact, for example, the Hollywood actress Jodie Foster plays a fictional scientist who attempts to find and 'contact' life elsewhere in the universe, and succeeds, creating a whirlwind of political, religious, social and other consequences. Obviously this is a made up story. It is science fiction, in fact. And yet, the movie uses the real President Clinton to play a fictional U.S. President, and the real TV reporter Larry King to play a fictional Larry King TV reporter, and a number of other actual well-known people to play fictional versions of themselves, as the story moves along.

Furthermore, there is an additional kind of new lying, the fictional characters referring to their author and creator, B. C. Duvall, right in the text (see Afterthought 1, for example). Although this is not really new either, as Luigi Pirandello's play, Six Characters in Search of an Author, proves. Many fiction writers have reported that not they, themselves, but their created characters, once they were created and rolling along in real fictional life, 'decided' what became of them in the stories the authors were writing.

All fiction, made-up story, and especially historical fiction, is a mind-boggling mix of fantasy, lie and truth, coming from many kinds of sources at once.

As the above (digitally altered) photo caption asserts, it is true that in Colombia, otherworldly lavender water hyacinths float down rivers, tall and lovely as potted hyacinths at Eastertime, bouncing and twirling with the dancing flow of currents in streams and lakes. But some detail about water hyacinths in the above caption, or in the rest of the story, may be made up, probably for a good reason; and a literary custom of the Western world will have it that just a single made up detail converts the whole story from true biography, true diary, or true reporting, into what we call 'fiction'.

And since we have established that the present work, a look at mj lorenzo's eleventh book, Hooked on Cocaland, IS FICTION, then certain 'rules' or 'guidelines' will have to apply, in reading it.

When reading an actual, not fictional, autobiography or treatise you might skip the introduction and footnotes and miss precious little, for example, although it is a bit risky. You might miss something that would help you understand much better the author's intention in writing the autobiography or treatise as she or he wrote it.

But in the present fictional work and all of the volumes of  a look, all of which are fiction, in 'this kind of writing', in other words, you are not advised to skip the fictional introduction, or a fictional caption, or anything fictional else, any more than you would want to skip an entire chapter when reading War and Peace, without risking the loss of the whole real kicking heart of the novel's fictional story. Every word and image from the top of the title page to the bottom of the last page and the words 'the end', as well as any image or addendum following 'the end', is part and parcel of the fictional story in 'this kind of writing'.

In the several volumes of a look at the life & creative artifacts of mj lorenzo, to wit, details that are essential to grasping the major story gist are as likely to appear in photos, images, indexes, footnotes, rough outlines, title pages, frontispieces, detailed outlines, captions, illustrations, quotations, chronologies, glossaries, editors' and author's notes to readers, introductions, forewords, afterwords, afterthoughts and appendices, and even (maybe especially) bibliographies, as to appear in the main text of the story. MORE LIKELY, if anything.

In the present work, for example, try the million dollar pearls of interpretation inserted smack in the middle of the Bibliography, where, if this were a real (not pretend or fictional) scholarly research work, they would scream 'sophomoric' or out and out psychotic.

It's because, after all: this is no treatise, Beatrice.

It just looks like a treatise, kind of, at times, to keep people fooled and off-guard. It's a fictional treatise.

It's a fick-shun, Gretchen.

A little lie, or a big one, like Huckleberry Finn, or War and Peace. But a true lie.

Because fiction comes straight the dickens from true reality, even fantasy fiction.

It comes from the reality of the real imagining and inventing heart.

There's a really very quite 'true' heart reason why somebody tells a given fictional story, Rory.

When Abraham, the moral father of Judaeo-Christian Western civilization, lied a tiny fiction and said his wife Sarah was his sister, he had a sincere and well-meaning heart reason for inventing that story, humanly frail though the reasoning might have been, and nerve-rattling the consequences, for concocting such a fib.

And another point: in real life, the crux, the convincer, the hook, the one thing that makes you believe the lie, is often just the very tiniest detail in the unlikeliest spot.

For instance, here in Mexico, I just sent a little village neighbor kid, 9-year-old Cristofer, to the store with 50 pesos, and he came back with 13 change, explaining that the potato chips were 27, the lettuce 7, and the cilantro 2.

"A peso's missing," I said. "Check your pockets."

"Well," he added quickly, finding nothing, "they said the chips were 27 and 28. They said both. I don't know which they were."

All the details of his story were true except, maybe, that tiny extra thing about 28, thrown in at the last second.

But you have to admit, that would be terribly quick-minded for an innocent-looking 9-year-old.  

So maybe it was the truth.

Were the pockets really empty?

The cilantro should have been a peso, not 2. Maybe.

But then again it's Mexico, where lying is not disparaged as in the neo-quasi-still-undyingly-Calvinist-weltanschauung USA.

So who knows?

Even a still-revered and world-famous church saint like Augustine was accused of inventing complimentary details about himself in his Confessions to further his fame and church politics. Jealous critics refused to believe that his life was as he told it, so 'sinful' and deliciously sexy in the beginning years, as he claimed, and so pure and exemplary in the later years post-'salvation'. They accused him of exaggerating his 'sinful' years, and his exemplary 'salvation', both, so as to aggrandize himself and make himself a living legend, in order to abuse the power so gained from his having impressed the Roman church and its hierarchy with his saintliness. No one ever proved the charge, however, so his book, Confessions, has been considered a true confessional for 1500 years.

In any case, and thankfully for fiction writers: if ever so little as one tiny bit of their whole story is made up, the tale as a whole qualifies as 'fiction', and can be told in a book, and sold in a bookstore, as 'fiction'.

An artistic lie. Made up.

And a good lie uses tiny detail to convince, as we said.

A truly good lie, in fact, even a book-length one like a look at the Dr.'s eleventh book Hooked on Cocaland, will use the very tiniest details to convince, and may slip them in like Easter eggs in unlikely spots.

Similarly, Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever” is a lie. It is not really a flag called the 'stars and stripes'. It's a piece of music. And it lasts three minutes, not 'forever'. It is a lie, therefore. A fantasy. A fiction. A made up falsehood. It is just a short march, not an eternal flag.

But you are not supposed to think about that when the band plays. The march's title and our traditional cultural understandings encourage us to feel that the independence-declared United States of America will triumph indefinitely, and that the music is demonstrating and celebrating the fact.

And that you, the free-spirited individual voter and enterpriser, are marching with the Lexington and Concord Revolutionary drums forever in your heart, piping the piccolo obligato solo two-handed, and waving Betsy Ross's flag of freedom with the third hand of your heart and soul.

The humble little piccolo part that Sousa slipped in there, is supposed to help you feel that patriotic excitement. It is the ultimate heart-truth kicker.

And the march ‘can be played’ without the piccolo part, of course; but who would tap their foot as much?

Similarly: in all of the various lying volumes of a look at the life & creative artifacts of mj lorenzo, as in the reality of true life, it is not just not unlikely, but truly more than likely that the ultimate kicker heart-truth will be tucked away in the most insignificant-looking last sentence of the last paragraph of a long and forgettable-looking footnote -- footnote 8 of the 10/3/94 diary entry being only one example of this. And who wants to miss the ultimate kicker???

Just as the last word of the last sentence of the last paragraph of the last chapter of War and Peace must be read to discover what the word 'Peace' in the title really means: which is that real Peace was finally found again, not when the warring between France and Russia was over, but only after a thousand more pages of excitement and horror and complicated travel home, when they were all back together again, on the unspectacular farm.

Just as the ultimate kicker in the booming and majestic “Stars and Stripes Forever” is that tiniest little pipsqueak of an event, the inimitable piccolo obligato solo.

Maybe it was with related thoughts that Lotte, in the 2010 German movie Goethe! ('Young Goethe in Love'), when asked if Werther's novel, intimate and suggestively titillating, based on their relationship, might be 'true', said: "It's more than true, it's poetry."