New Delhi, April 22 -- "The problem with fiction is that it has to be plausible. That's not true with non-fiction." - Tom Wolfe

This sounds like a joke. It is also completely serious. Tom Wolfe spent his entire career blurring the line between the two. He knew exactly what he was saying. And he said it with the grin of someone who had lived it firsthand.

Reality, it turns out, does not care about believability. It simply happens. Fiction, on the other hand, must convince you. A novelist who writes something too strange loses the reader. A journalist who reports something too strange just writes it down.

Fiction operates under a quiet but strict contract with the reader. Events must follow logically. Characters must behave consistently....