O'Brien offers abstract commentary on storytelling and blurs the divisions between truth and fiction and author and authorial persona through a series of paradoxical reversals. The primary examples are the paragraphs that begin and end the chapter. O'Brien immediately brands the story as true. In a direct address to readers he claims, "this is true." In the final paragraphs, O'Brien reverses this claim by redefining truth. "None of it happened," he writes, "none of it." Central to understanding the chapter is charting O'Brien's progression of calling the story absolutely true to calling the veracity of the story and the reliability of the "O'Brien" persona narrator into question. O'Brien does not lie — he changes the definition of telling the truth.
In this vignette, O'Brien presents two stories that fail to be "true" to their intended audiences. The first example is the "few stories" Rat Kiley includes in his letter to Curt Lemon's sister. To Rat, these stories about Lemon's extreme and questionable acts are true, and he wants to convey this truth to the sister, who fails to respond because she understands the stories in completely antithetical ways.
