Another excerpt from the Foreword. The “unreliable narrator” is a question every reader should ask of a first person perspective of any story. In my Foreword, I get that out of the way within the first couple hundred words. My narrator is not necessarily honest, but he is reliable. He is going to relate things as he feels them, but he may bend some objective truth to do so. The impermanence of things-especially love- and our own state of internal struggle against this is the heart of my protagonist’s purpose in telling this story, and it all comes back to that :
My father told me that we’re all writing our own eulogies based on how we live our lives.
That’s actually a lie. My father never said any such thing. I say my father said things he never actually did because I read once that people tend to grant greater regard to ideas when they are attributed to the sage image we all hold of a “father.”
I blame religion for that.
I blame religion for a lot of things despite being religious.
I blame religion for a lot of things because I am religious.
My father did say plenty of worthwhile things. Should a good adage strike me, I’ll fit it in when appropriate. Hopefully, when the time comes you’ll trust me enough to believe my father did utter those words. Hopefully, when the time comes you’ll respect my father in spite of my prior falsehood.
I could delete the fib, but I’m leaving it in as an act of defiance against the onslaught of impermanence we all drown in.
optionalirony.com 