The Review of Contemporary Fiction

The Nature of Truth, by Sergio Troncoso
reviewed by Valerie Ellis

Sergio Troncoso. The Nature of Truth. Northwestern Univ. Press, 2003. 259 pp. $22.95.

Sergio Troncoso must have had Paul de Man in mind when he wrote his first novel, The Nature of Truth, as he takes up a similar story—that of a German professor whose connection to the Nazis is discovered by a researcher—and a set of themes that are at the heart of the controversy and confusion over a theorist such as de Man, namely, the consequences involved in insisting on the relativity of truth and the connection between theory—what one espouses—and practice—how one lives. In Troncoso’s novel the professor who conceals his Nazi past, the researcher—Helmut Sanchez—who decides to take justice into his own hands (by murdering the professor), the detective who blames the crime on the professor’s gay lover but, because he does not have the evidence, finds his own way of punishing the man, and Sanchez’s girlfriend, Ariane, who does not turn him in after finding out about the murder, all make their own determinations about what constitutes the truth. And like the professor, they seem to get over their guilt rather quickly and with little suffering. Even Sanchez, who is the most conflicted, manages to justify the murder and by the end seems content with himself as he sets up house with Ariane in New Mexico, where his mother lives. Some of the issues of identity, the connection between Helmut’s own identity and his sense of guilt concerning the professor’s sympathies, and the political and philosophical issues that make the story itself so rich, get short shrift in Troncoso’s novel, and he sometimes resolves internal conflicts too quickly and easily. Nonetheless, The Nature of Truth is an interesting and provocative read.