[RonPrice]

Some diarists, poets and artists, like Evelyn Waugh and Michael Jackson, among a host of others, have a taste for exaggeration and fantasy. Indeed, exaggeration appears to be a major problem in our celebrity culture and in autobiography generally. Perhaps this is because, as Oscar Wilde once wrote: “Where there is no exaggeration there is no love, and where there is no love there is no understanding. It is only about things that do not interest one--that one can give a really unbiased opinion; and this is no doubt the reason why an unbiased opinion is always valueless.”1 -Ron Price with thanks to Oscar Wilde in the magazine Speaker, July, 1891. I think Wilde is a little over the top here, but his words exhibit a clever turn of phrase containing what is often, it seems to me anyway, an important facet of the truth of a question or issue. --Ron Price with thanks to Oscar Wilde in Robin Markowitz's article "Reconstructing Michael Jackson: Close Readings of Pop-Works," Stranger in a Strange Land: Internet Site, April 2004.

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married for 42 years, a teacher for 35 and a Baha'i for 50

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