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.

Contenu
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.