The stories in Alternative Facts feature notable real-world figures (for example, political consultant Kellyanne Conway, psychologist B. F. Skinner, photojournalist Burhand Ozbilici, novelist Thomas Pynchon, and media personality Paris Hilton). But because they are works of fiction, the stories take us where no journalist could ever tread: deep into the psyches of these figures, in ways that are, by turns, insightful, heartbreaking, and entertainingly absurd.
Alternative Facts begins with an eponymous, single-sentence story featuring the OG of alternative facts: Kellyanne Conway. This stylistically inventive tale is set at the 2017 presidential inaugural ball, where Conway was alleged to have intervened in a fight between two male guests, eventually punching one of them three times. Although the fight, and Conway’s punches, are conveyed in the story, they seem to be fleeting attractions on a stream-of-consciousness road trip through Conway’s mind, in which she denies multiple personal and political realities–in keeping with her actual behavior during Trump’s first presidency.
At one point, the fictional Conway remembers how she had:
As absurd as these and other observations in “Alternative Facts” are, they don’t seem terribly far removed from the absurdity of much political discourse during these troubling times. In this way, paradoxically, the story and its unrelenting stream of falsehoods capture a profoundly dangerous truth about this discourse, and about what it means for the direction of our country.
“Black Box” immerses us in the life of psychologist and radical behaviorist B. F. Skinner, imagining what textbook accounts could never reveal about him and his work. In real life and in this story, Skinner believed that the mind and consciousness are something of a black box, because they cannot be observed. Instead, Skinner held that researchers must focus on observable physical phenomena–specifically, how we behave in response to environmental stimuli. He also believed in operant conditioning, which uses rewards (e.g., positive reinforcement) and punishments to influence behavior.
Written from Skinner’s point of view, the story at times takes on the voice of the researcher he was. For example, he describes himself as “the subject,” while sometimes referring to humans he encounters as “organisms.” Even so, the Skinner of this story is not without feeling. To the contrary, we see how his life circumstances–from the Do this, do not do that rules of his parents, to the tragic early death of his brother–spark and shape his focus on human behavior. We also see his idealism–specifically, his experiments and inventions aimed at making the world a better place.
At the same time, this idealism sometimes meets with resistance, both in society and at home. For example, in an effort to make life better for his wife and the baby she’s about to give birth to, Skinner creates a specialized, temperature-controlled baby crib that, among other things, makes it easier to change soiled bedding and to lift the baby from the crib. When he “awaits positive reinforcement” from his wife, none comes, and we sense that a distance has opened up between them, in part because he’s spending far more time on his experiments than he is with his family. Later, after reading a novel he has written about a society in which there is no free will, and in which humans have been conditioned to ignore the “black box” of emotions and the mind, his wife expresses the view that he has “lost sight of everything human beings are.” Taken aback by her response, Skinner wonders if he can reverse the way he himself has been conditioned, exemplifying the problems that can arise when theories seem to take the shape of immovable facts, with all the attendant limitations and blind spots. The trajectory that this story presents, in terms of both Skinner’s research and his life, makes for fascinating and deeply moving reading.
One of my favorite stories in the collection is “From the Eyes of Travelers,” which features an actual event: the 2016 assassination of Russia’s former ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov, at a photography exhibition in Ankara, Turkey, where protests had been raging against Russia’s role in the Syrian Civil War and the battle over Aleppo. More specifically, the story captures the documentation of this assassination by photojournalist Burhand Ozbilici, also known as Oz, and the story is told from his point of view.
Before heading to the exhibition, Oz gets caught up in a debate (mostly internal) about the ethical position of photojournalists who, like him, cover life-endangering situations or their aftermath. The debate gets kicked off when a metro desk editor at Oz’s workplace asks him if photographing such situations, day after day, ever gets to him. The question irritates Oz, coming as it does from a man who, unlike himself, has had a desk-bound career, far from the dangers of wars and natural disasters. But it also forces Oz to confront an uncomfortable question faced by many photojournalists who document violent or otherwise destructive events: Is there any place for my emotions, or for my desire to intervene, or am I first and foremost a photographer?
In responding to the metro desk editor, Oz tries to explain a “code” he’s adopted as a photographer. First, he points to an overturned photograph on his own desk, a graphic depiction of the toll taken by a devastating earthquake in Pakistan. “A good photojournalist must show what happened,” he says. “Get the story, not interfere.” Then, he points to a Polaroid of a boy who was injured in the same earthquake. “I stopped shooting to help him, and his parents sent me this photo later, as a thank-you.”
Oz also makes this observation about the boy in the picture: “He reminds me to feel. To be human. No matter what I see. No matter how much I’ve gotta detach in the moment. Our empathy muscles? Just like any others. Use ‘em or lose ‘em. So I try to exercise mine a little each day. See from the eyes of those I photograph.”
After this encounter, Oz heads to the photography exhibit, where events put his photojournalism code to a difficult test, leading him–and us–to see how porous such principles can be, especially in quickly evolving, and highly dangerous, situations. (Although Oz is technically off the clock at the exhibit, he brings his photography gear just in case. As the Russian ambassador prepares to speak to the assembled crowd, Oz begins taking pictures out of habit, eventually capturing the ambassador’s assassination.)
As one example of the breakdown in Oz’s code, he can only only go so far in following his principle of seeing through the eyes of those he photographs. When it comes to the assassin, Oz tries to imagine life difficulties that might have contributed to committing such a violent act. Ultimately, though, this attempt at empathy fails. He reflects on the killer’s “seemingly innocent outrage over civilian deaths [in Syria] slowly congealing into a hatred of all that is human, a call to violence, permission to murder. … His was a corrupted idealism that could only end in blood.”
By immersing us in Oz’s point of view, “From the Eyes of Travelers” explores an ethical dilemma in a way that most nonfiction accounts wouldn’t be able to–through lived experience and deep reflection–and it makes way for the kinds of complications that seem inevitable among those who regularly face such quandaries.
Alternative Facts concludes with a novella-length work, “The Author and the Heiress,” that imagines a mutually life-changing encounter between the famously reclusive novelist Thomas Pynchon and media personality Paris Hilton.
As noted in the story, book critic Arthur Salm made this observation about Pynchon’s reclusiveness:
As if responding to this remark, “The Author and the Heiress” proves that such a meeting is, in fact, quite within the bounds of imagination, making for a tale that’s lots of fun.
The story is set on Hilton’s thirty-seventh birthday, when as a present to herself, she plans to land by helicopter on the roof of a New York City nightclub where Kim Kardashian is holding court. In this way, Hilton hopes to upstage Kardashian–whose celebrity mega-wattage has long since outshone Hilton’s fading star power–and revive her personal brand, bringing back the fame she once knew. Unfortunately, the helicopter landing misfires, sending Hilton hurtling earthward, and she lands not on the roof of a nightclub but on the fire escape of perhaps the least celebrity-welcoming person in the city: Pynchon.
In fact, Pynchon doesn’t recognize Hilton right away, and once he does, he’s not impressed. Nor is she impressed by his shabby clothing, buck teeth, and the loads of books she discovers in his apartment. Still, the two make a kind of pact. Pynchon pledges to get Hilton emergency dental treatment for a tooth she lost in her descent from the helicopter (to Hilton, appearing gap-toothed at the Kardashian event would be disastrous). In return, Pynchon hopes that jotting down observations about Hilton might break his writer’s block and inspire the kind of novel that could finally earn him a Pulitzer or Nobel Prize.
Despite his desire for literary glory, Pynchon remains a recluse. And he’s become even more paranoid since learning that a documentary about his reclusiveness is in progress, and that its makers are trying to hunt him down. The hunt is said to be led by Joaquin Phoenix, who played private investigator Doc Sportello in the movie Inherent Vice, based on the Pynchon novel of the same name, and by Sportello himself. (Yes, Pynchon’s fictional characters come to life in this story–more on this next.)
Wanting to address Hilton’s dental issues while also maintain his anonymity, Pynchon leads Hilton down to the so-called Zone, an alternate reality in the sewers of New York, where his fictional characters seem to live off-the-page lives. Chief among these characters is Dudley Eigenvalue, from Pynchon’s novel V. In addition to offering the services of a traditional dentist, Eigenvalue practices “psychodontia,” a combination of dentistry and psychoanalysis. With his help, both Hilton and Pynchon eventually come to new understandings of themselves and their realities.
Not wanting to give too much more away about “The Author and the Heiress,” I’ll conclude by saying that it offers a fun romp through Pynchon’s various fictional worlds, an adventure tale with the propulsiveness of a quest story, and a layered–and often humorous–exploration of what drives human beings to both crave fame and be put off by so many of its trappings. It’s likely that Pynchon fans will get a special kick out of this story, but you won’t have to have read Pynchon’s work to enjoy the ride.
Would My Pick be Your Pick?
If you're interested in ________, the answer may be "Yes":￭ Short stories
￭ Insightful writing about notable real-world figures
￭ Speculative fiction
￭ The works of Thomas Pynchon