Smith: An Unauthorized Fictography

In the kaleidoscopic, episodic joy ride of "Smith: An Unauthorized Fictography", Jory Post treats us to thirty interviews that may or may not be real, with an array of “ordinary” people who turn out to be anything but, all of them in conversation with an interviewer who is herself a mystery.

As one encounter follows another, we realize that “Smith” is a convenient alias for a range of voices, including: a traveling nurse from Saipan, a Vietnam-war vet who lives in his truck, a woman who can only tell her own story through fairy tales, a young man more comfortable talking to animals than people, an army brat, a poker prodigy, a pool shark. Some of these Smiths offer themselves openly to the interviewer, while others reveal as much in their resistance as they do in their narratives.

Through it all, the stories, distinct and musical as jazz solos, give voice to what we want, what thrills us, what we’ve been most hurt or touched by, and what we will never forget — secrets any one of us might spill if only someone would listen. Jory Post has.