It's interesting - you read that passage and you get "a true story that never happened" and I read it (thank you) and the truth of it is here:

And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross that river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do.

The devil, as they say, is in the details. Guy I used to mix with worked a few seasons of COPS. We were swapping stories one fine evening (he has a lot more stories, not only because he's older but because he has led a life of questionable decisions) and he described his first experience with gangrene in a back alley up in Hollywood, chasing after some pillhead wearing a bag mixer and chasing after a cameraman, and smelling something incredible, looking down, seeing a homeless guy with a disgusting leg, and then seeing the homeless guy whip out a can of Glade and spray it, embarrassed, into the air.

There are all sorts of writings and stories about homelessness. Dated a girl whose father and stepmother were both psychiatrists who worked with the homeless of Seattle for decades. But that can of Glade really sticks with me. It rally stuck with my friend. That's the sort of thing - like the water buffalo - that comes out as so random that it feels like you can learn something from it.

And I think that's where the truth aspect matters, regardless of the "fact" aspect. "The fog of war" is real and it applies to more than war. If I throw your experience beyond your expectations, that which you observe is going to be a new truth. It's like back in the glory days of particle physics, when scientists were smashing atoms together to see what new atoms they got - push the universe past its boundaries and you will find something regardless of whether or not you know what to do with it. By holding up that something you are increasing the knowledge of the universe. The self-evident righteousness of the tortured water buffalo is a new thing under the sun, but also an old thing. I can't remember if it was Fallujah or Najaf, but the video of the scared-ass kid with an M4 beating the shit out of some Iraqi that happened to be in the same building as him twenty minutes after his best friend got his face blown off has a lot in common with that water buffalo.

But you compare that with Hurt Locker and it's an external vs. internal perspective. Jarhead is not Blackhawk Down. It's a here's what I've learned perspective vs. a here's what I saw perspective. In the first instance, the act is curation - an attempt to make sense of a situation that happened removed from the author's experience. In the second instance, the act is testimony - an attempt to share everything important about a situation that happened directly within the author's experience.

Both perspectives are valuable, but we give the second perspective more leeway - first hand knowledge is of value for its purity. Second hand knowledge is of value for its refinement. There are examples in which the purity is refined - Catch 22 would not be the book it is if Joseph Heller hadn't flown 60 missions in the nose of a B-25. Likewise, Forever War is a very different book than Starship Troopers because Heinlein lost his legs to polio as a child while Haldeman nearly lost a foot to a claymore in Vietnam.

And I think it's important, as a reader or viewer, to know the perspective presented in order to interpret it correctly. The eight-year-old heroin addict is powerful allegory if presented as allegory. Presented as truth, it's a call-to-arms. Both are valuable, but as participants in media we require just as much of a "receiving" filter as our narrators require a "broadcasting" filter.

And really, that's what it comes down to - if I rode a motorcycle through the Restricted Zone around Pripyat, I'd likely see some interesting things that you wouldn't think of. I would, in that "fog of war", make some associations that you likely wouldn't make sitting on your couch. My associations would have the value of being genuine. I would be giving you purity.

However, if I'm sitting on a couch in Germany, writing about riding a motorcycle through the Restricted Zone, I'm not in that fog of war. My associations are not driven by reality, they're driven by flights of fancy. They are no less valuable, but if I present them as true, I give my audience a "parameter mismatch."

There is inherent truth in a true experience if only because of the perspective. By wearing the perspective of "truth" while presenting "fiction", something is truly lost in translation.