A Stars Hollow Gazette
You know, some people don’t read.
It’s not that they can’t, it’s that they read for information only. They don’t care about the plot and don’t identify with the characters. Metaphors or a felicitous turn of phrase are wasted on them.
You can feel the same way about history.
I’ve always seen it as a ripping yarn that has the benefit of not stretching your imagination much because it’s all true. As I’ve developed my understanding I’ve recognized that it as much written by real actors with a real axe to grind as anything else.
The past is not dead, it’s not even past said Faulkner.
Aristotle was not stupid. Many of his ideas were wrong because of the limitations imposed by his environment, but some also because of his personal attitudes and positions. Most of the ones that were right have been misinterpreted and abused.
If you just look at the facts and time lines and don’t understand the man you’re missing more than half the message.
13 comments
Skip to comment form
Author
About me you can be Manichean.
Fiction, IMO, shines a far brighter light on Truth than nonfiction ever can. (I am not talking about supermegabestsellers here.) Great fiction is character-driven, and shows the reader how two characters, each acting according to what they believe is for the greater good, can come into conflict because their worldviews are so very different.
(“When Cultures Collide”?)
And you’re right: far too few people appreciate brilliant writing…it’s why Dan Brown–a pedestrian writer at best–sold so many books. Potboiler? Sure. Well-written? Truman Capote as channeled by Robin Williams: “That’s not writing, that’s just typing!
History as Truth? Not so much. History is rewritten by the victors–and even when well-intentioned historians try to convey what the people of the time were thinking there is still that filter of their own mindsets…here I am thinking of a brilliant short book that I read in high school (& which I think is still in the college curriculum for Shakespeare 101): The Elizabethan World Picture by E. M. W. Tillyard.
But Tillyard’s book seems the exception that proves the rule: much of history is interpreted according to the prejudices of those writing it, with little or no attempt to understand, let alone convey, what the culture in question actually thought–about itself, about the world.
And of course Tillyard had a huge advantage: Elizabeth I ruled for a long time, she created the English Renaissance, and any historian of the period has volumes of contemporary sources to mine.
Other cultures are not so lucky.
But the human spirit: for good or for evil: has not evolved one whit since the First Dynasty of Egypt. So when brilliant novelists can convey the human heart, the human condition, I believe there is more Truth involved, than when some self-proclaimed historian like David Irving tries to rewrite history to make it conform to his wishes.
Two things:
First of all, shouldn’t that be “and don’t understand the person”
One of the biggest ways history has been distorted is by leaving out herstory.
And secondly, years ago when I was in seminary, one of my theology professors used to talk about the historical christian theologians. He would usually make the point that it was as important to know what kind of life they lived as it was to know what kind of dogma they taught. And if the two didn’t match…hit the eject button.