SOURCE: Longhurst, C. A. “The Problem of Truth in San Manuel Bueno, mártir.” The Modern Language Review 76, no. 3 (July 1981): 581-97.

In the following essay, Longhurst argues that readers of Saint Emmanuel the Good, Martyr will never be able to know the truth about the character Emmanuel because he is never seen directly, but always indirectly through the eyes of Angela.

We all know that fiction is the opposite of fact. A novel is called fiction, not fact ; it is therefore not true. Yet while we are reading it we treat it as if it were true. What we are told in a novel, then, is true in a limited sense, that is to say it is true within the confines of the book. But if we happen to hold that truth is not absolute but relative to the observer, not merely something out there but something in...