Truth Versus Verisimilitude

The Oxford English Dictionary defines verisimilitude as "the appearance of being true or real; likeness or resemblance to truth."

truth is defined as "the quality of being true."

true is defined as "consistent with fact; agreeing with the reality; representing the thing as it is."

So we have the ideas of factual and appearing to be factual.

I am currently reading Louis de Bernieres' novel Birds Without Wings. It's a collection of intertwining tales that span the first twenty or so years of the 20th century. Most of it appears to be set in the Ottoman Empire, in present-day Turkey. The author has done a lot of work to create a rich world for his reader, and I've been told about foods, and clothing (and clothing and clothing) and language and religion and ethnicity and on almost every page there is some sort of detail about the time and place, all to establish the richness (and otherness and particularity) of the world of the story.

How much of what de Bernieres presents to me is factual? I have no idea. How much of what he writes has been simplified, conflated, misunderstood by the author or just plain made up to suit the needs of the story? I have no idea. I assume that some of the details of the story world are as true as de Bernieres could make them, and that some of the details of the story world are entirely fictional because, you know, de Bernieres after all writes fiction and has an active imagination. When the author tells us what Mustafa Kemal Atatürk is thinking as a young army officer in Smyrna, we must assume that de Bernieres has imagined those thoughts for our benefit. And we accept, while immersed in the reading, that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk thinks those things as long as they feel true in the context of the story and when compared to our experience of being alive and having known other human beings. In other words, de Bernieres' obvious bits of fiction are perfectly acceptable as long as he doesn't disturb the novel's verisimilitude.

I am of the opinion that verisimilitude is far more important than truth in a work of fiction. First, it's harder to establish. Second, despite statements by some fans of "historical" fiction or other genres, most readers don't come to fiction in order to find out facts. There are truths to be discovered in fiction, but the most important of those truths have nothing to do with places and dates and history; the most important thruths in fiction have to do with the existential question, and those truths cannot be revealed by any number of historical or scientific facts.