"[While] we have only one life, nevertheless that one life ("that massive datum," John Updike calls it in his memoir Self-Consciousness) lends itself to any number of stories — and I'm speaking here not of fabrications but of sincere, straightforward factual accounts. Another way to put it is that any life's story can be told in any number of ways, depending on the teller's "handle," or angle of view, or lens. In fact, of course, the same applies to fictional characters: people made out of words in a novel or words and images on a screen."