If the Truth Be Told : Accounts in Literary Forms / by Ronald J. Pelias.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pelias, Ronald J., Author.

Series:

Social Fictions Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Education.

Local Subjects:

Education.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (245 p.)

Edition:

1st ed. 2016.

Place of Publication:

Rotterdam : SensePublishers : Imprint: SensePublishers, 2016.

Summary:

If the Truth Be Told: Accounts in Literary Forms plays with the sense of truth. It is composed of six chapters, “Childhood Dangers,” “Relational Logics,” “Jesus Chronicles,” “Criminal Tales,” “Aging, Illness, and Death Lessons,” and “Telling Truths.” Each chapter includes fictional and nonfictional accounts, including poems, stories, monologues, short dramas, essays, creative nonfiction, and mixed genres, to address each chapter’s subject. Pieces are based on the author’s personal experiences, newspapers accounts, and purely fictional accounts (all revealed in an appendix at the end of the book). Moving through the book from beginning to end, readers may or may not know whether they are reading a nonfictional or fictional text. Pelias intentionally subverts assumptions readers may have in reading the different pieces in order to blur the boundaries of what counts as evidence, what might be accepted as truth, what might be of use in everyday lives. In this vein, Pelias invites readers to consider what they value and why. As an engaging compilation of literary works, this book can be read by anyone simply for pleasure. If Truth Be Told can also be used in any number of college courses in communication, creative writing, cultural studies, ethics, narrative inquiry, philosophy, psychology, sociology and qualitative inquiry. The book includes an extensive appendix with general and chapter-by-chapter discussion questions. “If the truth be told, I’d confess that I found myself in many of the stories he told; I anticipate that other readers will as well, and we’ll all be better for it. If the Truth Be Told solidifies Pelias’s standing as a wise and creative writer par excellence.” – Carolyn Ellis, University of South Florida “For anyone interested in learning how to poetically and creatively capture the human experience, If the Truth be Told is a must read. Each tale richly satisfies yet whets the desire for more;the only solution is to keep reading right through to the end.”– Lesa Lockford, Bowling Green State University Ronald J. Pelias has spent his career working with the fusion of performance, literature, and qualitative methods in an ongoing search for truths that provide momentary places of rest. .

Contents:

Acknowledgments

Beginnings: If the Truth Be Told

Relational Logics

Wanting

Now

Performance

The Ideal Partner

Spitting Together

Waiting

First Love

When I Came Home

Mutual Embraces

One Night Stand

Cruelties

Lonely Deer

Finis

Custody Battle

Against

Asking

Moving

Getting It Right

Olga

Another Year

Childhood and Adolescent Dangers

Starbucks

Suffocating

Bookcase

Curiosity

Toddler Found in Schoolyard

Boy

Long Range

Childhood Distress

Don’t

Dead Man’s Alley

Bobby

Back Yard

School Instruction

Manacle Mom

Fifteen High School Micro-Dramas

Stuck

Drinking

In Search of a Drinking Song

Jesus Chronicles

For the Children

Kudzu Communion

No More

Church Going

Christian Spinoffs

Body to Body

Judgment

Priest Confesses

Following God’s Law

A Christian Education

Prayers

The Trick

You Can’t Boo Jesus

Criminal Tales

The Drugstore Heist

Woman Charged

Man Ordered

The Interview

The Criminal Mind

From the Bridge

Railway Shooting

Crimes of United States Politicians

Twin

Shotgun Murder

Ruined Day

An Open Letter to the Person Who Broke into My House

Painted Body Parts

On the One-Year Anniversary of Ferguson

Staying Inside

Last Words

When Those We Call Great Fall

Aging, Illness, and Death Lessons

The Worry List

Surfaces

Woman Hospitalized

On Going Nuts

When

The End of an Academic Career

Still Waiting

How to Watch Your Mother Die

Old Bones

Cremation Endings

Morgue

Bien

Still There

Ritual

Passing

The Grave

Always Becoming

Telling Truths

American Beauty

Ken Doll Turns Forty

Playing the Game

The Lies Couples Keep

Nailed Down

On the Streets

Neighbor

The Teacher

Border Crossing

Helen

Pilot Partly Sucked Out of Airliner

Pit Bulls

Spills

No Rhyme or Reason

Old Bald Men

How the World Breaks

Tell Me the Truth

Clues to the Possibility of Hearing the Truth

Tears

Repair

He

The Truth

A Final Truth

Appendix A: An Accounting by Genre of the Author’s Truth Telling

Appendix B: Engagements

Suggested Reading

About the Author. .

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9789463004565

9463004564

OCLC:

938891016