The Biography Of The Transparent Ironist

The ship-wrecked Ironist would live on that island for another five years. Every evening, the islanders would gather round the fire to tell their stories of forgotten times, and the Ironist too would sit down beside them listening to them, gently nodding his head to the sharp sounds of the crackling twigs. Sometimes it was his turn to tell them a story, and his listeners always had a sense of uncanniness whenever they heard his stories, a sense which, however, they could not quite put into words. One morning, they found the Ironist dead in his brown cottage by the sea-shore, and under his table also a thick dusty sheaf of yellowed papers. Some of the islanders collected them into a book which they published as his autobiography. It was only then that they were finally able to explain precisely what it was about his stories that used to unnerve them. The Ironist had delicately merged their stories into the narrative of his own life, sometimes leaving gaps that they could complete with their details, and sometimes filling them in with his own strange tales. On reading his autobiography, they were in fact unable to say where their stories had ended and where his had started. They felt that they were being invited to enter into one gigantic inter-connected web into which he had masterfully woven the stories of the islanders and his own story to form one seamless whole. Somehow they were reading their own biographies through his autobiography : in it was reflected some of their most deeply-cherished views, was expressed some of their hidden wishes, and was voiced some of their unspoken griefs.