Tall tales and extravagant stories
like the ones in Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of
Wonder come up all the time, and it’s up to the reader/listener to find
verify the claimed truths of these stories. For Lawrence Weschler, he has to
painstakingly trace the steps of Mr. Wilson in an attempt to uncover the truth
of the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Weschler attempts to find every person
mentioned in Mr. Wilson’s history of the museum, from Maston to Sonnabend, only
to find out that Mr. Wilson’s telling of the startup of the museum, along with
the exhibits, is a large, hazed over half-truth. The lack of irony, or seeming
irony rather, is what gives the museum and Mr. Wilson their appearance of
credibility, which Weschler discovers to be something of a performance art exhibit.
The research done to find this all
out was as precise as it could be, and Weschler proved to be persistent,
despite evidence that some of the stories were utter fabrications. Instead of
simply dismissing the entire museum, he continued to search answers to all the
potential questions, and came to the answer that this museum was not the museum
it claimed to be. This museum was performance art, satire, and discourse on the
“authority” of museums. Weschler went to the source, whether that be Mr. Wilson’s
wife, Jim Svejda, or the Carolina Biological Supply Company, to get confirmation
on Mr. Wilson’s stories. Only by direct sources was Weschler able to uncover
the truth of Mr. Wilson’s Museum of Jurassic Technology.
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