Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions - Daniel Wallace
We all tell fish stories. We stretch the truth about ourselves, our lives, and others. Sometimes we do this to make ourselves look better, bigger, more important. Sometimes we do this to hide ourselves from others. And sometimes, like Edward Bloom, the bigger-than-life personality in Big Fish, we do it because our life – though relatively common – can be experienced as an epic adventure. On his deathbed, Edward Bloom tells his son, “Remembering a man’s stories makes him immortal, did you know that?” (20) Edward’s son is disappointed that he does not truly know his father. Instead, he only has the over-the-top stories his father has told him his entire life. He thinks to himself, “The truth is, most things are hard to talk about with him. By that I mean the essence of things, the important things, the things that matter” (70). Eventually, the son accepts the fact that his father’s life will remain a mystery to him, and thus tells his father’s story in the way his father would be proud of. He summarizes, “but now, instead of the simple fish stories that had satisfied them before, it is the history of the life Edward Bloom never lived in Specter that engages them, a life they wished they had, and the life, finally, he came to live in their minds; as Edward Bloom reinvented them, so they reinvented him” (160). We are the stories we tell ourselves. Sometimes these stories are true. Other times they are mere fabrications. This is a creative tale of how stories can both illuminate and obscure a person.