Verisimiltude

My favorite new word is one I learned while investigating a favorite professor's recommendation that I learn something about autoethnography. This is a fun recommendation that came out of a wine-tipsy discussion lastnight about how to start writing; I've been playing with the idea of writing about what I know the most about culturally -- the cultural experience of being raised in a white Midwestern Protestant context. Pop reference: in some ways, the Coen brothers' Fargo is something of an autoethnographic work. This kind of approach to chronicling culture focuses on a writer's investigation of a culture in which he or she identifies, or is a part of.

So: verisimiltude is the word of the week! From the Latin verum (truth) and similis (similar), verisimiltude has to do with the appearance of being true or real; or the resemblance of truth, reality or a fact's probability. This was recognized as an important part of a reader or audience's experience when presented with a work of art in the old times of peeps like Aristotle and Plato. They said that for an audience to identify with a piece of art, they must recognize its grounding in reality. Apparently now the post-modernists say that before a reader or audience can analyze whether or not they identify the content of art as truthful or based in reality, it must make sense to them as a logically sensible statement of artistic expression. This allows art to precede reality... much like my visits to the Hirschorn museum!! "Wow, man, that's so... artful" is a much more probable comment from me while staring at an installation of fluorescent lights above a baby cradle decoupaged in magazine clippings of waif models than "Wow, man, that's so...true!"

I'd really rather be a writer who appeals to a reader's sense of reality than leaving the reader thinking I'm just artful. I like saying the word verisimiltude. I think it's a true statement that verisimiltude is a fun thing to say.

Verisimiltudific!