In Memoriam by Garrett Highly

I'm interested in the limits of traditional prose as a storytelling medium, and the way our expectations, as members of a hyperliterate culture, are shaped by those limits. One of our expectations is the existence of one definitive text—one truth. I began this project thinking I would reveal that "truth" through the "lies" of these bereaved strangers. I suppose I did. The words are sometimes difficult to see, the sentences challenging to parse—it's often hard to read, in every sense, but it's there. Still, as I finished this first version, I realized "In Memoriam" was a piece of nonfiction not in spite of the obituary it deconstructs, but in combination with it. What my family knew about that man needed to be said, but the words of the people who loved him couldn't be ignored. The whole truth doesn't reside in one text or the other; it lives only in the tension between them.