If it really happened. Because the events are so ulikley, the reader is supposed to be amazed that they did happen. That there’s a real actual live human going through all these experinces that it’s spectacular that he survived it all. It speaks of a indominatable will to live, someone who could take punishment more extreme than you could imagine, fight thier own personal demons and win.

But how hard is it to just say all that happened when it didn’t. There’s nothing extrodinary about that at all. It’s just a lie.

Kind of like writing about a spectacular magic trick that never happened. The fictional magician could make the sun dissappear, turning day into night, but that’s just stupid. Without reality as a constraint, stories like these loose all meaning.

But there’s an entirely different feel when I start reading a “true” story only to find out it’s false. If I picked it up as a work of fiction then I would have finished it. A friend of mine took my copy and read it as such. She enjoyed it.