Sentence:  As a consequence of the tensions thus produced in his thoughts and feelings , he wrote on the one hand sketches of idealized hunting trips and on the other an anecdote of the village of Hardscrabble , Arkansas , where no one had ever seen a piano ; and he wrote also the masterpiece of frontier humor , `` The Big Bear of Arkansas '' , in which earthy realism is placed alongside the <WSD>exaggeration</WSD> of the backwoods tall-tale and the awe with which man contemplates the grandeur and the mysteries of nature . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  extravagant exaggeration