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"I couldn't exaggerate at all," Sedaris once complained about an Esquire magazine assignment to report on life at a Phoenix morgue. "It gave me a whole new appreciation for people who can honestly tell the truth, because people didn't always say what I wanted them to."

"Everything in 'Naked' was true," he told the webzine GettingIt in 1999. "I mean, I exaggerate. But all the situations were true."

Heard declares that at least one scene from "Naked" -- in which Sedaris gets bitten by a naked patient at Dorothea Dix Hospital in Raleigh while working there as a volunteer in the 1970s -- is not true. He knows this because Sedaris told him. The author also told Heard he had concocted a key scene and other details in his story about the guitar teacher.

Two outright fabrications in four books of essays: "Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim" (2004), "Me Talk Pretty One Day" (2000), "Holidays on Ice," (1997) and "Naked" (1997). (Sedaris' first book, 1994's "Barrel Fever," is a collection of short fiction and essays.)

I wouldn't be surprised if there were more and, I expect, neither would Sedaris' fans. While even Heard admits Sedaris' essays are all based in fact, we know Sedaris is no Edward R. Murrow. How? Because he told us so. Besides, life may be stranger than fiction, but it's rarely as funny. Exaggeration and embellishment are what allow humor to suggest larger truths.

In fairness to Heard, full disclosure is important. But so are a sense of scale and context. His investigation of Sedaris' work might have been useful without his prosecutorial swagger and damning headline. Unlike the infamous fabricators Heard also mentions in his article, James Frey and Stephen Glass, Sedaris has never tried to deceive his readers. We're all in on the joke.

Still I wait with bated breath for Heard's next investigation. Perhaps he'll expose the pope's Catholic upbringing, the central role cows play in the production of ice cream or Derek Jeter's womanizing. Oh the un-wonders that await us!

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