An
anecdote is a short
tale narrating an interesting or amusing
biographical incident. It may be as brief as the setting and provocation of a
bon mot. An anecdote is always based on real life, an incident involving actual persons, whether famous or not, in real places. However, over time, modification in reuse may convert a particular anecdote to a fictional piece, one that is retold but is "too good to be true". Sometimes humorous, anecdotes are not
jokes, because their primary
purpose is not simply to evoke laughter, but to reveal a truth more general than the brief tale itself, or to delineate a character trait or the workings of an institution in such a light that it strikes in a flash of insight to their very essence. A brief monologue beginning "A man pops in a bar..." will be a joke. A brief monologue beginning "Once
J. Edgar Hoover popped in a bar..." will be an anecdote. An anecdote thus is closer to the tradition of the
parable than the patently invented
fable with its animal characters and generic human figures— but it is distinct from the parable in the
historical specificity which it claims. An anecdote is not a
metaphor nor does it bear a
moral, a necessity in both parable and fable, merely an illustrative incident that is in some way an
epitome.