But it has a fatal blind spot, which is that underneath all the stories there is a layer of hard fact that does not care how well you narrate it.

A signature either matches or it does not.

A notary either held a valid commission on a given date or she did not.

A man is either alive to sign a document or he has been dead for two months.

Michael had spent his life in the world of persuasion and had come to believe it was the only world.

He had forgotten there was a floor under it, and I had spent forty years standing on that floor.