Useful Fictions, Part V – “Historical Fiction,” Proper

May 15, 2014June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

Frederick J. Chiaventone, commenting on his own novel Moon of Bitter Cold:

One of the great delights of the historical novelist is the license to hang flesh on the bones of the actors and set the blood pumping through their veins. While the purist may decry this practice, others will find it useful and perhaps informative. There is a sense in which fiction can reveal more to us more of the truth than history in that historians are frequently constrained by their reliance on relics, some written, which are in themselves the products of imperfect and differently motivated human beings.
So while the historian can at best provide an objective account of the facts (however incomplete or imperfect), it is the province of the novelist to address not only the objective facts of a period and a people but their passions as well. To paraphrase Macaulay, it can be the difference between a topographical map and a painted landscape.

I like this, but Chiaventone does seem to lean towards a truth more at home in Kate Chopin than Doris Kearns Goodwin. He seems to promote moving past the factual in order to capture more important truths – which wistorical fiction can, and often does.

But in my mind that’s not the most important or purest sort of historical fiction. Let’s try another…

Richard Lee of the Historical Novel Society:

Historical fiction is the most primal, the most NATURAL of literary forms. If you look at all early literature in all cultures – even oral cultures – you find that the first stories that they tell are hero stories about their own ancestors and forebears. A man who boasts about himself is simply that – a boaster. But a man who boasts about his pedigree: well, he’s giving you REASONS why he is superior!
…Whether the story is fantastical, for example, the sort that proves a king’s descent from a god, or more earthy, like the Odysseus style of story, which praises tribal or national cunning, the impulse is the same: to present an idealized, dramatized form of the past.
So in all cultures, historical fiction is the most natural form of story-telling.
Think one step further and you will realize that this isn’t just the preserve of ancient peoples – it’s the way we tell stories of our own families. If we sit down to tell our children or grandchildren about someone they have never met – someone, perhaps, who was dear to us – we don’t try to sum up that person’s life, or give any balanced picture of the facts. We tell anecdotes. We tell stories that make SHAPES and CHARACTERS out of the past…
And we are not always too worried about whether or not these stories are precisely true – and certainly not in an historian’s “verifiable” sense of truth. We want them to be amusing to tell, to make the past come BACK to us, and to bring it alive for our listeners. And we make heroes… of those we have known. Anything, so long as what is dear to us is not forgotten. That’s historical fiction – and it is probably the most fundamental human literary need…
Stephen Crane, the author of the American Civil War classic The Red Badge of Courage, was once asked why he had chosen to write his book as fiction rather than history. You see he was a scholar. The reason, he said, was because he wanted to FEEL the situations of the War as a PROTAGONIST, not from the outside. And it was only by writing a novel that he could do this.
And this is what all historical fiction does. It makes us feel, as a protagonist, what otherwise would be dead and lost to us. It transports us into the past. And the very best historical fiction presents to us a TRUTH of the past that is NOT the truth of the history books, but a bigger truth, a more important truth – a truth of the HEART.

I like this as well. Although it starts off with an appreciation of the usefulness of some fictions, Lee steers the issue to one of probing history a bit through the way we write and attempt to capture it. We may twist the facts to grasp at reality, but we can just as desperately wrestle with the muse to better grasp the facts in all their complicated glory. Through historical fiction we can refuse to let it go until we’ve been enlightened, or granted some new words to call old things.

Michael Shaara, in the intro of The Killer Angels, says he wrote the book because he wanted to know “what it was like to be there, what the weather was like, what the men’s faces looked like.” He adds that since there were so many different historical interpretations of what went on at the Battle of Gettysburg, he based his narratives primarily on the letters, journal entries, and memoirs of the men who were there. This is in some ways the purest sort of historical fiction – using narrative form, reasonable gap-filling, and a light literary touch to reclaim experience, perspectives, people, and moments lost in the past.

As novelizations of history have grown increasingly popular and taken greater liberties with the thoughts and words of their main characters, the genre continues to evolve. I believe it was David McCullough who suggested that “no harm is done to history by making it something someone would want to read.” I’m sure he’s right, but the more life we bring to dead people and events, the more possible it is that we’re creating our own reality rather than capturing theirs.

Still, I’ve found myself oddly engaged in topics I’d never have pursued through traditional history. I was unusually sympathetic to the struggles of Paul Du Chaillu to prove the existence of gorillas, and spent weeks tickled over the idea that Charles Dickens invented our modern concept of Christmas. I almost mourned over the death of President Garfield, about whom I knew almost nothing prior, and still ache for Alexander Graham Bell’s need to be useful and not merely famous. I found myself sucked into some small appreciation of the architectural risks taken at the 1893 World’s Fair, and how landscaping reflects larger cultural values – and I even kind of cared. Thus the power of novelization, of non-fiction fiction.

In short, my world is rather larger for having walked briefly in these worlds, something that would not have happened if I were left to imagine them based on available facts myself. Is that worth some risk in terms of absolute historical happening?

This entire series I’ve mostly strung together examples of things I can’t otherwise explain and the words of others saying what I’d have wished to say, but better. It seems only fitting, then, to conclude with my favorite commentary on the relationship between fact and story, by someone trying to capture history experienced firsthand. I’ve edited the passage somewhat for this blog.

Excerpt of “How to Tell a True War Story” from The Things They Carried (Tim O’Brien)
How do you generalize?
War is hell, but that’s not the half of it, because war is mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead.
The truths are contradictory. It can be argued, for instance, that war is grotesque. But in truth war is also beauty. For all its horror, you can’t help but gape at the awful majesty of combat. You stare out at tracer rounds unwinding through the dark like brilliant red ribbons. You crouch in ambush as a cool, impassive moon rises over the nighttime paddies. You admire the fluid symmetries of troops on the move, the great sheets of metal-fire streaming down from a gunship, the illumination rounds, the white phosphorus, the purply orange glow of napalm, the rocket’s red glare. It’s not pretty, exactly. It’s astonishing. It fills the eye. It commands you. You hate it, yes, but your eyes do not. Like a killer forest fire, like cancer under a microscope, any battle or bombing raid or artillery barrage has the aesthetic purity of absolute moral indifference – a powerful, implacable beauty – and a true war story will tell the truth about this, though the truth is ugly.
To generalize about war is like generalizing about peace. Almost everything is true. Almost nothing is true.
Though it’s odd, you’re never more alive than when you’re almost dead. You recognize what’s valuable. Freshly, as if for the first time, you love what’s best in yourself and in the world, all that might be lost. At the hour of dusk you sit at your foxhole and look out on a wide river turning pinkish red, and at the mountains beyond, and although in the morning you must cross the river and go into the mountains and do terrible things and maybe die, even so, you find yourself studying the fine colors on the river, you feel wonder and awe at the setting of the sun, and you are filled with a hard, aching love for how the world could be and always should be, but now is not…
The old rules are no longer binding, the old truths no longer true. Right spills over into wrong. Order blends into chaos, hate into love, ugliness into beauty, law into anarchy, civility into savagery. The vapors suck you in. You can’t tell where you are, or why you’re there, and the only certainty is absolute ambiguity.
In war you lose your sense of the definite, hence your sense of truth itself, and therefore it’s safe to say that in a true war story nothing is absolutely true.
Often in a true war story there is not even a point, or else the point doesn’t hit you until, say, twenty years later, in your sleep, and you wake up and shake your wife and start telling the story to her, except when you get to the end you’ve forgotten the point again. And then for a long time you lie there watching the story happen in your head. You listen to your wife’s breathing. The war’s over. You close your eyes…
You can tell a true war story by the questions you ask. Somebody tells a story, let’s say, and afterward you ask, “Is it true?” and if the answer matters, you’ve got your answer.
For example, we’ve all heard this one. Four guys go down a trail. A grenade sails out. One guy jumps on it and takes the blast and saves his three buddies.
Is it true?
The answer matters.
You’d feel cheated if it never happened. Without the grounding reality, it’s just a trite bit of puffery, pure Hollywood, untrue in the way all such stories are untrue. Yet even if it did happen – and maybe it did, anything’s possible – even then you know it can’t be true, because a true war story does not depend upon that kind of truth. Absolute occurrence is irrelevant. A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.
For example: Four guys go down a trail. A grenade sails out. One guy jumps on it and takes the blast, but it’s a killer grenade and everybody dies anyway. Before they die, though, one of the dead guys says, “The **** you do that for?” and the jumper says, “Story of my life, man,” and the other guy starts to smile but he’s dead.
That’s a true story that never happened…
Now and then, when I tell {one of my stories}, someone will come up to me afterward and say she liked it. It’s always a woman. Usually it’s an older woman of kindly temperament and humane politics. She’ll explain that as a rule she hates war stories; she can’t understand why people want to wallow in all the blood and gore. But this one she liked… Sometimes, even, there are little tears. What I should do, she’ll say, is put it all behind me. Find new stories to tell.
I won’t say it but I’ll think it.
I’ll picture Rat Kiley’s face, his grief, and I’ll think, You dumb *****.
Because she wasn’t listening.
It wasn’t a war story. It was a love story.
But you can’t say that. All you can do is tell it one more time, patiently, adding and subtracting, making up a few things to get at the real truth… It’s all made up. Beginning to end. Every ******* detail – the mountains and the river and especially that poor dumb baby buffalo. None of it happened. None of it. And even if it did happen, it didn’t happen in the mountains, it happened in this little village on the Batangan Peninsula, and it was raining like crazy, and one night a guy named Stink Harris woke up screaming with a leech on his tongue.
You can tell a true war story if you just keep on telling it. And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It’s about sunlight. It’s about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross that river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do. It’s about love and memory. It’s about sorrow. It’s about sisters who never write back and people who never listen.

I’m not sure I’ve ended up anywhere better than when I started, but I did get some of this out of my system for now. I’m always open for comments, guest blog responses, or unbridled praise, so bring it on. But tell the truth.

Useful Fictions, Part IV – What’s Your Story?

May 12, 2014June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 1 Comment

I rambled recently about the stories we tell ourselves in relation to the various ‘urban legends’ surrounding important moments in American history, then got even more carried away discussing the evolution of folktales – something I’m completely unqualified (but nevertheless entirely willing) to do. I even managed to begin a discussion of proper “historical fiction” awash in my own brand of blogorial brilliance.

And I’m sure it will.

Because “historical fiction,” properly asserted, uses the freedom of fiction to suggest or magnify historical reality. It seeks to increase understanding and comprehension and connection, not obscure it. Generally, its writers care deeply about fact.

That’s the twist ending, you see – after all the talk of fable and distortion – that this power can be used for good and not evil. To elucidate rather than obscure. No wonder that post – if it ever happens – is going to scintillate.

The thing is, there’s one other form of narrative and ‘fiction’ that’s picking away at the edges of this discussion. It’s a type of packaging that gives order and meaning to events on a more personal level. It’s a form of story structuring that can provide a useful framework for handling complex information, or bind us without conscious recognition it’s even there.

Perhaps you or someone you love are familiar with popular inner narratives such as…

“The Legend of the Frustrating Spouse Who’s Probably Never Going to Change So I Just Have To Bear My Cross and Deal With Him/Her.”
“Snow White Intentions and the Little Lies That Never Hurt Anyone.”
“The Story of the Woman Who Got Fatter and Older No Matter What She Did.”
“One More Step: How Real Happiness is Just a Few More Accomplishments Away.”

Oh be careful little mind what you think – words have power, and stories have lots of words.

Jonathan Haidt is a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia who writes extensively about the elements which make up our social and political selves. He contrasts two ‘narratives’ often adopted as unspoken paradigms of the ‘left’ and the ‘right’:

[T]he “liberal progress narrative”… goes like this: “Once upon a time, the vast majority of human persons suffered in societies and social institutions that were unjust, unhealthy, repressive, and oppressive. These traditional societies were reprehensible because of their deep-rooted inequality, exploitation, and irrational traditionalism…. But the noble human aspiration for autonomy, equality, and prosperity struggled mightily against the forces of misery and oppression, and eventually succeeded in establishing modern, liberal, democratic, capitalist, welfare societies.
While modern social conditions hold the potential to maximize the individual freedom and pleasure of all, there is much work to be done to dismantle the powerful vestiges of inequality, exploitation, and repression. This struggle for the good society in which individuals are equal and free to pursue their serf-defined happiness is the one mission truly worth dedicating one’s life to achieving.”
This narrative… should be recognizable to leftists everywhere. It’s a heroic liberation narrative. Authority, hierarchy, power, and tradition are the chains that must be broken to free the “noble aspirations” of the victims…

As previously discussed, the stories we tell ourselves both reflect and shape our realities. Thanks to the wonders of Confirmation Bias, once we adopt a narrative – consciously or un – it becomes increasingly unlikely that subsequent experience or information will dramatically alter that narrative.

That’s problematic enough if the narrative involves Hanson or people who drive pickup trucks, but far worse if it’s about that irresponsible brother-in-law you see on holidays or that neighbor who you suspect keeps taking stuff people leave outside. And it’s not just the lefties:

Contrast that narrative to one for modern conservatism… [which] goes like this: “Once upon a time, America was a shining beacon. Then liberals came along and erected an enormous federal bureaucracy that handcuffed the invisible hand of the free market. They subverted our traditional American values and opposed God and faith at every step of the way…. Instead of requiring that people work for a living, they siphoned money from hardworking Americans and gave it to Cadillac-driving drug addicts and welfare queens.
Instead of punishing criminals, they tried to ‘understand’ them. Instead of worrying about the victims of crime, they worried about the rights of criminals…. Instead of adhering to traditional American values of family, fidelity, and personal responsibility, they preached promiscuity, premarital sex, and the gay lifestyle … and they encouraged a feminist agenda that undermined traditional family roles…. Instead of projecting strength to those who would do evil around the world, they cut military budgets, disrespected our soldiers in uniform, burned our flag, and chose negotiation and multilateralism…. Then Americans decided to take their country back from those who sought to undermine it.”
…[This] general plot line and moral breadth should be recognizable to conservatives everywhere. This too is a heroic narrative, but it’s a heroism of defense. It’s less suited to being turned into a major motion picture. Rather than the visually striking image of crowds storming the Bastille and freeing the prisoners, this narrative looks more like a family reclaiming its home from termites and then repairing the joists.

Imagine the exponential power of some of our most popular narratives if left unexamined:

“The Story of the Damned Liberals Who Just Want To Destroy America and Unleash Further Perversion on our Children.”
“The Parable of the Psychotic Rich White Guys Who Cackle Maniacally Whenever The Environment is Damaged or Minorities Suffer.”
“The Epic Adventure of the Universe That’s Out To Get Me No Matter What I Do Because I’m Just Cursed I Guess.”

Others are closer to home:

“Ode to the Sweet White Girl Who Never Gives Me Any Trouble In Class.”
“The Case of the Kid Who Acts Like a #$%@ & the Seething Resentment I’m Sure I Hide Well.”
“Kids These Days: A Tragic Comedy About a Generation So Lazy There’s No Real Hope, But We Just Keep Trying To Teach Them Anyway.”
“The Teacher Who We All Know Isn’t Sick That Often and is Way Too Informal With Her Kids and So All We Can Do Is Roll Our Eyes and Make Jokes About Her Behind Her Back.”

That last title is a bit long – I may need to work on that one.

Sometimes our narratives do more than interpret or preserve information. Sometimes they cleverly replace what actually happened with more cooperative “facts” in order to maintain themselves. They then roll merrily along reflecting and shaping our values and worldview – with or without or conscious consent.

It matters what we tell ourselves, and others, and it matters even more if we’re not aware of and examining our narratives. What stories ARE we telling ourselves? What paradigms shape our understandings of history, or others, or ourselves?

Stories circumvent logic, and even choice, if we don’t pay close attention. Let’s make an effort to be aware of the narratives already woven into our psyches and how they shape each day’s puts – both the in and the out. We have them about the world around us and the people in it – and they have them about us. Wouldn’t it be fascinating to truly share?

Useful Fictions, Part III – Historical Fiction… Sort Of

May 7, 2014June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

I wrote recently about the ‘urban legends’ of American History – the colorful stories which tend to root in significant events. Even factually flawed, these myths proffer illumination beyond the events themselves through their framing – or even their distortion – of the mere facts of a happening.

Sometimes history is reshaped to reflect cultural priorities, other times to give a little extra ‘oomph’ to an important moment. Sometimes the distortion is malicious, or self-serving. Sometimes we just get it wrong.

“Historical Fiction” is a different creature. These tales are both written and read with the overt understanding that they are not necessarily precise in terms of actual objective happening, or at least not defensibly so. The goal is rather to bring flesh and soul to lost people and events in order to capture engaging truths by moving beyond the available facts. It can be powerful, enlightening, controversial, or stirring. Or, sometimes, it just sucks.

What a concept – breathing life into the dusty remnants of the past in order to commune with them more personally. And what vanity, what hubris, to even try! But then, reaching for elusive truths – for those essential intangibles – is what fiction does best, isn’t it?

By way of example, here’s a short story with which some of you may be familiar:

A man, going into another country, called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods. And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one; to each according to his several ability; and he went on his journey.
Straightway he that received the five talents went and traded with them, and made other five talents. In like manner he also that received the two gained other two. But he that received the one went away and digged in the earth, and hid his lord’s money.
Now after a long time the lord of those servants cometh, and maketh a reckoning with them.
And he that received the five talents came and brought other five talents, saying, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five talents: lo, I have gained other five talents. His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will set thee over many things; enter thou into the joy of thy lord.
And he also that received the two talents came and said, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me two talents: lo, I have gained other two talents. His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will set thee over many things; enter thou into the joy of thy lord.
And he also that had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art a hard man, reaping where thou didst not sow, and gathering where thou didst not scatter; and I was afraid, and went away and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, thou hast thine own.
But his lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I did not scatter; thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the bankers, and at my coming I should have received back mine own with interest. Take ye away therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him that hath the ten talents.
For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not, even that which he hath shall be taken away. And cast ye out the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness: there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth.

I didn’t actually write this one (I don’t even own the copyright on it), but I do recognize that it points to a type of truth above its own details, and beyond investment strategies or commentary on a particular type of caste system. The person telling the story is trying to bring some connection to his listeners – to allow them in some small way to walk in a reality beyond their immediate grasp.

That’s what good fiction often does.

But, you may argue, that’s not exactly “historical fiction.” You’ve deceived us with your clever titles and slick wordplay! Fair enough. It’s just that the lines can be a tad fuzzy.

Here’s a classic from Kate Chopin circa 1894:

The Story of an Hour
Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death.
It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. Her husband’s friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard’s name leading the list of “killed.” He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.
She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.
There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul. She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.
There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window. She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.
She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought. There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.
Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will–as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been. When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under hte breath: “free, free, free!” The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.
She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial. She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.
There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.
And yet she had loved him–sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!
“Free! Body and soul free!” she kept whispering.
Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhold, imploring for admission. “Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door–you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise? For heaven’s sake open the door.”
“Go away. I am not making myself ill.” No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window. Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.
She arose at length and opened the door to her sister’s importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister’s waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.
Someone was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine’s piercing cry; at Richards’ quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.
When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease–of the joy that kills.

Fiction, yes. Truth? Chopin thought so. She was quite the fan of killing off female protagonists and blaming patriarchy. But is it “historical fiction”?

Mr. & Mrs. Mallard are both entirely fictional, and the exact train accident described is unverifiable. On the other hand, upper middle class women of late 19th century America did often have stairs, and doors, and tumultuous bosoms. The ‘truth’ captured here is not unique to a particular time and place, but it was a specific feature of this time and place. It was also – not uncoincidentally – more or less Kate Chopin’s real life time and place.

Lest you find Chopin too caliginous to make the point, let me share a very different short story from 1949 that is – as far as I know – entirely fictional, and yet… so very true. I have absolutely no right to reproduce it here:

After You, My Dear Alphonse (Shirley Jackson)
Mrs. Wilson was just taking the gingerbread out of the oven when she heard Johnny outside talking to someone.
“Johnny,” she called, “you’re late. Come in and get your lunch.”
“Just a minute, Mother,” Johnny said. “After you, my dear Alphonse.”
“After you, my dear Alphonse,” another voice said.
“No, after you, my dear Alphonse,” Johnny said.
Mrs. Wilson opened the door. “Johnny,” she said, “you come in this minute and get your lunch. You can play after you’ve eaten.”
Johnny came in after her, slowly. “Mother,” he said, “I brought Boyd home for lunch with me.
“Boyd?” Mrs. Wilson thought for a moment. “I don’t believe I’ve met Boyd. Bring him in, dear, since you’ve invited him. Lunch is ready.”
“Boyd!” Johnny yelled. “Hey, Boyd, come on.
“I’m coming. Just got to unload this stuff.”
“Well, hurry, or my mother’ll be sore.”
“Johnny, that’s not very polite to either your friend or your mother,” Mrs. Wilson said. “Come sit down, Boyd.”
As she turned to show Boyd where to sit, she saw he was a Negro boy, smaller than Johnny but about the same age. His arms were loaded with split kindling wood. “Where’ll I put this stuff, Johnny?” he asked.
Mrs. Wilson turned to Johnny. “Johnny,” she said, “what is that wood?”
“Dead Japanese,” Johnny said mildly. “We stand them in the ground and run over them with tanks.”
“How do you do, Mrs. Wilson?” Boyd said.
“How do you do, Boyd? You shouldn’t let Johnny make you carry all that wood. Sit down now and eat lunch, both of you.
“Why shouldn’t he carry the wood, Mother? It’s his wood. We got it at his place.”
“Johnny,” Mrs. Wilson said, “go on and eat your lunch.”
“Sure,” Johnny said. He held out the dish of scrambled eggs to Boyd. “After you, my dear Alphonse.”
“After you, my dear Alphonse,” Boyd said. “After you, my dear Alphonse,” Johnny said. They began to giggle.
“Are you hungry, Boyd?” Mrs. Wilson asked.
“Yes, Mrs. Wilson.”
“Well, don’t you let Johnny stop you. He always fusses about eating, so you just see that you get a good lunch. There’s plenty of food here for you to have all you want.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Wilson.”
“Come on, Alphonse,” Johnny said. He pushed half the scrambled eggs on to Boyd’s plate. Boyd watched while Mrs. Wilson put a dish of stewed tomatoes beside his plate.
“Boyd don’t eat tomatoes, do you, Boyd?” Johnny said.
“Doesn’t eat tomatoes, Johnny. And just because you don’t like them, don’t say that about Boyd. Boyd will eat anything.”
“Bet he won’t,” Johnny said, attacking his scrambled eggs.
“Boyd wants to grow up and be a big strong man so he can work hard,” Mrs. Wilson said. “I’ll bet Boyd’s father eats stewed tomatoes.”
“My father eats anything he wants to,” Boyd said.
“So does mine,” Johnny said. “Sometimes he doesn’t eat hardly anything. He’s a little guy, though. Wouldn’t hurt a flea.”
“Mine’s a little guy, too,” Boyd said.
“I’ll bet he’s strong, though,” Mrs. Wilson said. She hesitated. “Does he . . . work?”
“Sure,” Johnny said. “Boyd’s father works in a factory.”
“There, you see?” Mrs. Wilson said. “And he certainly has to be strong to do that—all that lifting and carrying at a factory.”
“Boyd’s father doesn’t have to,” Johnny said. “He’s a foreman.”
Mrs. Wilson felt defeated. “What does your mother do, Boyd?”
“My mother?” Boyd was surprised. “She takes care of us kids.”
“Oh. She doesn’t work, then?”
“Why should she?” Johnny said through a mouthful of eggs. “You don’t work.”
“You really don’t want any stewed tomatoes, Boyd?”
“No, thank you, Mrs. Wilson,” Boyd said.
“No, thank you, Mrs. Wilson, no, thank you, Mrs. Wilson, no, thank you, Mrs. Wilson,” Johnny said. “Boyd’s sister’s going to work, though. She’s going to be a teacher.”
“That’s a very fine attitude for her to have, Boyd.” Mrs. Wilson restrained an impulse to pat Boyd on the head. “I imagine you’re all very proud of her?”
“I guess so,” Boyd said.
“What about all your other brothers and sisters? I guess all of you want to make just as much of yourselves as you can.
“There’s only me and Jean,” Boyd said. “I don’t know yet what I want to be when I grow up.
“We’re going to be tank drivers, Boyd and me,” Johnny said. “Zoom.” Mrs. Wilson caught Boyd’s glass of milk as Johnny’s napkin ring, suddenly transformed into a tank, plowed heavily across the table.
“Look, Johnny,” Boyd said. “Here’s a foxhole. I’m shooting at you.”
Mrs. Wilson, with the speed born of long experience, took the gingerbread off the shelf and placed it carefully between the tank and the foxhole.
“Now eat as much as you want to, Boyd,” she said. “I want to see you get filled up.”
“Boyd eats a lot, but not as much as I do,” Johnny said. “I’m bigger than he is.”
“You’re not much bigger,” Boyd said. “I can beat you running.”
Mrs. Wilson took a deep breath. “Boyd,” she said. Both boys turned to her.
“Boyd, Johnny has some suits that are a little too small for him, and a winter coat. It’s not new, of course, but there’s lots of wear in it still. And I have a few dresses that your mother or sister could probably use. Your mother can make them over into lots of things for all of you, and I’d be very happy to give them to you. Suppose before you leave I make up a big bundle and then you and Johnny can take it over to your mother right away…”
Her voice trailed off as she saw Boyd’s puzzled expression. “But I have plenty of clothes, thank you,” he said. “And I don’t think my mother knows how to sew very well, and anyway I guess we buy about everything we need. Thank you very much though.”
“We don’t have time to carry that old stuff around, Mother,” Johnny said. “We got to play tanks with the kids today.”
Mrs. Wilson lifted the plate of gingerbread off the table as Boyd was about to take another piece. “There are many little boys like you, Boyd, who would be grateful for the clothes someone was kind enough to give them.”
“Boyd will take them if you want him to, Mother,” Johnny said.
“I didn’t mean to make you mad, Mrs. Wilson,” Boyd said.
“Don’t think I’m angry, Boyd. I’m just disappointed in you, that’s all. Now let’s not say anything more about it.”
She began clearing the plates off the table, and Johnny took Boyd’s hand and pulled him to the door. “‘Bye, Mother,” Johnny said. Boyd stood for a minute, staring at Mrs. Wilson’s back.
“After you, my dear Alphonse,” Johnny said, holding the door open.
“Is your mother still mad?” Mrs. Wilson heard Boyd ask in a low voice.
“I don’t know,” Johnny said. “She’s screwy sometimes.”
“So’s mine,” Boyd said. He hesitated. “After you, my dear Alphonse.”

That’s too much truth to try to explain with facts. It’s too subtle and profound and works on too many different levels to cram into objective reality. Like Chopin’s tale above, its truth is founded in a particular time and place, but points to something more universal.

Unfortunately.

But when we speak of “historical fiction” we usually mean something a little heavier on the “historical” – more Killer Angels than The Awakening. I can’t wait to read whatever I have to say about THOSE! Next time.

Useful Fictions, Part II – The Stories We Tell Ourselves

May 3, 2014June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 1 Comment

Most of you are familiar with the story of the Tortoise and the Hare or some variation thereof. The stripped down version goes something like this.

A turtle and a rabbit are having a race on some pretense or other. The race begins, and the rabbit leaves the turtle far behind, as you would expect. The turtle just keeps right on moving as best he can, though, and after a time the rabbit gets lazy, or cocky, or both, and takes a lil’ nap – which is irrational in these circumstances but sets up the moral of the story.
While the rabbit dozes, the turtle lumbers on by. Right as the rabbit wakes up, he sees the turtle almost over the finish line, and rushes to catch up. His hubris has cost him dearly, however, and he loses the race.

There are two morals to this version of the tale – one from the rabbit’s perspective and one from the turtle’s.

“Slow and steady wins the race,” we say on behalf of the turtle, who just kept plugging away even when events seemed to indicate the futility of so doing. The lesson for the rabbit is a bit sharper: “Don’t get too comfortable, no matter how far ahead you think you are. You can lose it all in a moment.”

Those are good American morals, don’t you think? Hard work, patience, fortitude… We love that stuff – in theory if not always in practice. At the very least we appreciate them in others. And for those who are a bit ahead of the game? Other value systems might suggest slowing down to wait for or even help along the turtle, or merely enjoying the fruits of one’s success without feeling the need to prove more. But the American way is to NEVER slow down, or let up. If you’re not running, and leading, by insane margins, you are – for all metaphorical purposes – losing.

We tell it to our kids for either lesson, or both, and because it’s a nice story.

This version of the story is not universally applicable, however. It was not, for example, particularly useful for slave children in the antebellum United States. Slow and steady would NOT win the race, and no amount of fortitude or perseverance would be worth much if you were a slave. There was little to gain pretending otherwise. Being ahead was not even on the table, so forget that.

On the other hand, consider this tale:

The rabbit is the cockiest and cruelest of the animals, and bullies the turtle into a race. The turtle has little choice, and after trying to dissuade the rabbit of the idea, they “agree” to test themselves the following morning. Just to keep things interesting, the rabbit adds a last-minute wager – the winner of the race will kill, cook, and eat the loser.
Good times.
The next morning the badger fires the starting pistol with a scowl. The rabbit leaves the turtle far behind, as you would expect, but as the rabbit is turning the first corner of the agreed upon path and entering the woods, he sees the turtle AHEAD of him on the trail – which makes no sense to him at all. Still, a solvable problem, and the rabbit picks up speed and easily passes the turtle, smirking as he flies by.
As he comes out of the wooded area, however, the rabbit sees the turtle ahead of him again, and about to cross the small bridge over the stream which marks the halfway point of the race. Now growing rather concerned, and saying some very inappropriate words under his increasingly labored breath, the rabbit pushes himself harder – his heart now pounding and his lungs beginning to burn. He passes the turtle just past the bridge and curses him as he does.
Coming around the final corner of the race, which dips a bit with the contours of the land, the panicked rabbit sees the turtle about to cross the finish line. Despite a rather insane burst of last-minute effort, he cannot catch up – and he loses the race.
That evening the turtle, and his uncle, and his brother-in-law, and his son, have rabbit stew for dinner. It’s quite tasty, I’m told.

The initial turtle only survived because the turtles helped each other – quietly, and subtly, albeit at some risk to themselves. The deception only worked because to a rabbit, all turtles look pretty much the same, and because it never occurred to him that turtles might be smart.

I don’t actually want to teach those lessons to my kids in 2014 – that deception is sometimes necessary, to do what it takes to stay in the race, to play on others’ assumptions and stereotypes of you rather than defy them, etc. But those were pretty useful lessons for a slave child in the early 19th century. Much better than that ‘slow and steady’ stuff.

The stories we tell ourselves matter. They matter because they demonstrate who we are, but they in turn shape who we are by shaping what we perceive. Our worldview is at least partly – and I suspect actually rather largely – shaped by the narrative through which we interpret it.

Narratives are the framework into which we fit experience. I don’t say this to be poetic, but to point out their importance.

At the risk of getting all evolutionary – thus alienating half of my Eleven Faithful Readers – we have learned to categorize and see patterns and make generalizations to conserve brain space and to survive.

Not all snakes are dangerous, for example, and a few may be quite helpful in some ways, but learning to tell hundreds of them apart, quickly, and in various situations, is time, labor, and brain space intensive. If I’m right, nothing happens; if I’m wrong, I could die – painfully.

So, a narrative: “Snakes are scary bad. Run away from snakes.”

This takes up almost no brain space, requires little processing when I do encounter a snake, and produces quick benefit and almost no risk (there are few if any situations in which it’s VERY HELPFUL for me to be near just the right snake).

Extend this to people from other tribes, races, places, etc., and you can see how our stories begin to shape themselves around this bit of evolutionary efficiency. Sometimes reality shapes the stories, sure – but how easily the stories in turn shape reality.

Numerous western fairy tales have evolved over the centuries to reflect changing times. Cinderella and the people around her became less brutal as life became less cruel for those telling the tale. At the same time, the agency in the tale gradually shifted away from Ella’s grit and piety and became a function of nature, fairy godmothers, or the savior prince so prevalent in young ladies’ upbringings for so many generations. Someday your prince will come, honey. Keep sewing.

How much good will legal evolution do if the patriarchy owns the female psyche through the stories we tell?

Ella’s agency and that of her ilk didn’t completely disappear, but it certainly evolved. Consider the Little Mermaid – who in both the Grimm and Disney versions of the story defies her father, entwines herself with the male of another species (or race), and makes a deal with dark forces to do so. She trades her voice – literally, which should absolutely horrify even the mildest feminist – for a shot at first base with the savior prince.

A few centuries ago, she paid for her brash indiscretion by turning to sea foam. A few decades ago, however, she not only wins the boy, who then kills the dark forces, but secures an apology from the father who tried to stand in the way of underage cross-species love-at-first-sight.

In the late 20th Century narrative, there is no cause more just than the emotional impulses of a rebellious 16-year old girl dressed like a stripper at Sea World.

The stories we tell reflect our worlds, and shape how we process those worlds. The crab sang one narrative, which lost (even though it was a better song). Ariel and the trout sang another, and it changed which world they belonged to – the one with forks.

But fairy and folk tales are not the only ones we tell ourselves, nor are they always the ones which shape us most profoundly. To be continued…

Useful Fictions, Part I – Historical Myths

May 1, 2014June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

In 1851 at the Akron Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, Sojourner Truth – a former slave and fiery speaker – spoke extemporaneously to the women and few men assembled there. The Anti-Slavery Bugle of Salem, Ohio, reported the event:

One of the most unique and interesting speeches of the Convention was made by Sojourner Truth, an emancipated slave. It is impossible to transfer it to paper, or convey any adequate idea of the effect it produced upon the audience. Those only can appreciate it who saw her powerful form, her whole-souled, earnest gesture, and listened to her strong and truthful tones. She came forward to the platform and addressing the President said with great simplicity:
May I say a few words? Receiving an affirmative answer, she proceeded; I want to say a few words about this matter. I am for woman’s rights. I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that? I have heard much about the sexes being equal; I can carry as much as any man, and can eat as much too, if I can get it. I am as strong as any man that is now.
As for intellect, all I can say is, if woman have a pint and a man a quart – why can’t she have her little pint full? You need not be afraid to give us our rights for fear we will take too much – for we won’t take more than our pint will hold.
The poor men seem to be all in confusion and don’t know what to do. Why children, if you have woman’s rights give it to her and you will feel better. You will have your own rights, and there won’t be so much trouble.

Twelve years later, Frances Gage – a well-known reformer, abolitionist, and feminist in her own right – recounted the event somewhat differently. Gage was present at the convention, and was in fact the President to whom Truth addressed her initial request to speak. The version Gage recorded has become much better known, and is the one most often replicated, laminated, and recited when we speak of Truth today.

Several ministers attended the second day of the Woman’s Rights Convention, and were not shy in voicing their opinion of man’s superiority over women. One claimed “superior intellect”, one spoke of the “manhood of Christ,” and still another referred to the “sin of our first mother.”
Suddenly, Sojourner Truth rose from her seat in the corner of the church.
“For God’s sake, Mrs. Gage, don’t let her speak!” half a dozen women whispered loudly, fearing that their cause would be mixed up with Abolition.
Sojourner walked to the podium and slowly took off her sunbonnet. Her six-foot frame towered over the audience. She began to speak in her deep, resonant voice: “Well, children, where there is so much racket, there must be something out of kilter, I think between the Negroes of the South and the women of the North – all talking about rights – the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what’s all this talking about?”
Sojourner pointed to one of the ministers. “That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody helps me any best place. And ain’t I a woman?”
Sojourner raised herself to her full height. “Look at me! Look at my arm.” She bared her right arm and flexed her powerful muscles. “I have plowed, I have planted and I have gathered into barns. And no man could head me. And ain’t I a woman?”
“I could work as much, and eat as much as man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne children and seen most of them sold into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me. And ain’t I a woman?”
The women in the audience began to cheer wildly.
She pointed to another minister. “He talks about this thing in the head. What’s that they call it?”
“Intellect,” whispered a woman nearby.
“That’s it, honey. What’s intellect got to do with women’s rights or black folks’ rights? If my cup won’t hold but a pint and yours holds a quart, wouldn’t you be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full?”
“That little man in black there! He says women can’t have as much rights as men. ‘Cause Christ wasn’t a woman. She stood with outstretched arms and eyes of fire. “Where did your Christ come from?”
“Where did your Christ come from?”, she thundered again. “From God and a Woman! Man had nothing to do with him!”
The entire church now roared with deafening applause.
“If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back and get it right-side up again. And now that they are asking to do it the men better let them.”

How do we account for the difference?

There are a number of possibilities, but the most likely – and the one to which I subscribe – is that Gage had twelve years to tweak and rework the initial event in her mind and in her no doubt repeated discussions of it. Truth went on to be a recognized voice in both abolition and women’s rights during that period, and gave innumerable speeches herself, many of which built on and varied the ideas she expressed in 1851. There was no video of the event, or prepared copies of the speech – the closest written version we have is that of the Bugle quoted above.

So was Gage lying? Did she just forget over time? I’m not convinced either of these need entirely be the case. I’d argue the key is found in that initial report from the Bugle:

It is impossible to transfer it to paper, or convey any adequate idea of the effect it produced upon the audience. Those only can appreciate it who saw her… listened to her…

I’m no expert on etymology, but I’m pretty sure this is the 1851 version of “you had to be there.”

Maybe it was impossible to transfer the effect to paper, but Gage could try. I submit that she altered the facts in order to capture the truth. Recounting the event was inadequate, so she revamped it in order to get closer to what actually happened experientially. In her mind, I believe, the most important element of Truth’s speech that night was not the transcript, but the message and its impact.

Most of us have altered a few inconvenient facts here and there in order to make a point. We even have a grammatical term for such things: hyperbole.

“I just about fell through the floor!” No you didn’t, but I get how shocked you must have been. “I swear, I hit every red light between here and Ft. Worth!” Unlikely, but it does sound like a frustrating trip. Characters on TV behave rather melodramatically so we don’t miss their meaning. If our real-life antagonist at work narrowed their eyes and scowled at us while dramatic music swelled behind them each time they were thinking something unpleasant about sweet, blameless us, it would be hard to know whether we should report them to HR or skip straight to contacting an exorcist.

Often our memories help us out by actually altering the facts recalled in order to better fit the experience we had, good or bad. Great moments get better, bad moments get worse, embarrassing experiences grow more extreme, and our stories evolve each time we tell them.
And sometimes we just lie. But even those can offer interesting insights, once pondered.

These strange, not-entirely-factual accounts often illuminate important aspects of key events, or of ourselves processing these events, which are lost in the mere facts. Of course we must correct the inaccuracies – but first, let’s look at why they resonate in the first place. What can we learn from some of history’s most persistent nonsense?

The Stud Columbus & His Flat Earth

Christopher Columbus has become a controversial figure in recent years. For some reason, the Native population of this grand land refuses to get overly excited about the man who first brought enslavement, disease, and near genocide to their ancestors. The basic mythology of his story has proven rather tenacious, however, even as his status as someone deserving their own holiday has come into dispute.

Columbus believed the world was round, everyone else thought it was flat. He seduced Queen Isabella, who gave him ships. He discovered the New World despite the mutinous mindset of his motley crew, and here we are.

Most of you know this is all nonsense – long-discredited urban legends of the historical flavor. Every educated person knew the world was round; Columbus just thought it was much, much smaller than it actually is. His stubborn error made a little boating expedition to the Indies seem less insane. Once he landed in the New World, he stuck to his belief he’d found a route to the Far East or thereabouts, and held to this despite mounting evidence and minor annoyances like glaring reality – and clung to his delusion until he died.

Isabella granted the ships for her own reasons, largely political (imagine that), and if his crew bordered on mutiny it could be related to Columbus being a bit of a pompous ass who took credit for their work and damn near got them all killed several times.

So what makes the bogus, fabled version sticky in our national consciousness?

If America was (or is) a land chosen and blessed by God, perhaps it deserved a better ‘birth’ story than the deluded navigator who refused to believe he’d landed in the wrong place. It may be possible to reconcile a “City on a Hill” / “Manifest Destiny” / “White Man’s Burden” mindset with the raping, pillaging, and enslaving of natives enabled by Columbus as soon as the first rowboat hit sand, but it’s much easier to align those self-selected American attributes with a tale of enlightenment and progress (earth = round) overcoming a Middle Ages backwardness (earth = flat).

The idea of a leader able to abuse his underlings with impunity based primarily on his position (because the real boss put him in charge) seems a little too Koch Bros or Bill Lumbergh for our tastes. But a strong leader able to corral his motley crew through force of will… that’s something we can at least admire – think Sam Houston or Will Riker.

As to romancing the Queen, real Americans aren’t wild about monarchy to begin with – combine that with a woman in charge (yes, I know Ferdinand was around, but Izzy had her own areas of sway – of which this was one) and maybe we needed a little role adjustment. A woman who uses her wiles to manipulate a powerful man is generally thought a ‘whore’, from the Latin root kardashian, while a male doing the same to get what he wants from a queen is a ‘stud’, or in the Latin, playaaa.

The information in the fabled version is false, but I respectfully suggest it reveals a great deal of truth about the events and our framing of them – a truth on which we base much bigger decisions than we do the facty version. Examining it matters.

Abraham Lincoln and the Gettysburg Address

This brief oration is arguably the most important speech of the 19th Century – maybe in all of American history. In approximately three minutes, President Lincoln deftly redefined the purpose and scope of the Civil War and charged his audience and all future Americans with the “great task remaining before us” of extending full American-ness to all people, as apparently both the Founders and the dead soldiers being commemorated that day had intended – although that would have come as news to many of them, had they been alive to hear it.

Setting that aside, it was a rather significant course adjustment in American history and one of the better things we’ve done along the way – building on the ideals of the Declaration of Independence rather than the pragmatism of the Constitution to expand democracy and some degree of equality from the few to the many. Sort of. Sometimes. In theory.

Lincoln did not compose this oration on the back of an envelope on the way to the ceremony. The very idea is completely out of keeping with his character and habits. If Lincoln were expected to speak somewhere, he prepared intensely, and well in advance. On those periodic occasions he was pressed to speak and had nothing ready, he made a few kind, humorous remarks, then explained he had nothing prepared, and rather than look silly, or misspeak, he’d say nothing. While details can be debated, multiple sources confirm his working and reworking of the speech in the weeks leading up to the event.

Sometimes added to the tale is that the previous speaker, Edward Everett, spoke for freakin’ ever, presumably boring the funereal snot out of everyone as proven by the fact that no one’s studying HIS speech 150 years later. Then… up steps Lincoln, three minutes of miracle, and boom – he drops the mike, throws a peace sign, and struts back onto the train.

What makes the envelope story and the idea that Everett was a drone while Lincoln killed it stick in our collective consciousness?

There’s a certain spiritual, inspirational element to the idea that the speech just flowed naturally out of Lincoln’s pen at the last metaphorical moment. Jesus told his followers in the Gospels not to worry about what they’d say, for the Spirit would provide the right words at the right time. All the way back to the Greeks, there’s a certain mojo to following the Muse.

Little wonder, looking at this speech a masterpiece of imagery, language, and manipulation for the good of mankind, and in so few words – that we can almost SEE the white dove descending from heaven to whisper the words in Lincoln’s ear. Less romantic is the idea that good writing – like good anything – is more often the product of years of effort, study, and practice.

Maybe from time to time Robert Plant wakes up in the middle of the night and can’t help but scribble down the lyrics to Stairway to Heaven before the moment evaporates from his drug-addled mind, but most of the time songwriters write songs the normal way – they get an idea, a hook, a phrase, and work it and revise it until they’re relatively happy with it. Even then, most aren’t masterpieces – but some are.

Mmmbop, badubadop bah dooom bop. Ba dooee-yah bah doo-bah, badooba dah badoo. Can you tell me? You say you can – but you don’t know.

Sometimes things just fall into place, but most of the time some amount of working your ass off is involved. It makes the story less cool, but does not necessarily make the speech itself less inspired. Should it really detract from the accomplishment of this lil’ oration that it was preceded by a revision or two, and a few decades of nights by the fireside reading his way into being able to think and speak with such efficacy?
Movies often fast-forward through the part where actual work and progress occur because those parts aren’t exciting to watch. That’s fine – admire the results. But don’t forget the montage.

Everett did indeed speak for somewhere around three hours, but that wasn’t considered excessive, nor was it tiring to hear. This was a pre-Xbox, pre-Facebook, pre-RockfordFiles nation. Life was in many ways slower and oration was high entertainment when done well – and Everett was the Paul McCartney of speechifyin’. A bit on the long side of his peak, he was nevertheless legendary for leading the audience through whatever rhetorical journey he chose, and by all accounts that day he was a master.

It would be inconceivable today for the President to be at any event for which he was not the focus, but that was not the case in 1863. Lincoln’s remarks were perhaps a bit briefer than anticipated, but he was never expected to be the main event. He was the after dinner mint of the affair, and the centrality of his three minutes only seems obvious in retrospect. Lincoln took a nation built on compromise and mired in war and lifted its vision back upwards, out of the clutter, and back to ideals perhaps even a bit grander than those of our Founders. The mythology which clings to the moment speaks to its importance.

The Assassination of JFK

The various conspiracy theories and alternative explanations for the death of our 35th President are fairly well-known, thanks to Oliver Stone, the interweb, and a recent X-Men movie. Rather than rehash them here, I’ll rely on The Onion to summarize:

Why the persistence of this, and the other ginormous conspiracy theories associated with every major big bad moment?

There’s something terrifying in the idea that in an instant, everything can change – we’re taking our kid to the store when a drunk driver plows through an intersection, we wake up to go to work when some unknown dormant medical condition suddenly manifests, or the next petty criminal chooses our Kwiky-Mart to start shooting everyone. How much more threatening to our world paradigm that a lone weirdo like Lee Harvey Oswald could change the course of history with a few pulls of the trigger and the randomness of the universe in play? The very idea suggests an almost existential absurdity that makes one’s soul hurt.

The idea that 9/11 was an inside job or that MLK was killed by the FBI is disturbing enough, but the alternatives are worse – that individuals or small groups of people, without the knowledge or control of those tasked with keeping us safe, did the worst of big bad things no one could anticipate or stop. We are creatures who want desperately to see order in our surroundings, and to claim some element of control over even the least controllable parts of our lives. A massive conspiracy by a large, powerful organization or sly government entity may be loathsome, but it’s not quite so terrifying as the unpredictability of the alternatives.

The plethora and sometimes bizarre diversity of theories about JFK’s death show us less about the events of November 1963 and more about ourselves and the stories we write and tell in order to give structure to our universe – and implied order to our future. They demonstrate that while perhaps we’d prefer to feel in charge ourselves, we’d at least like for SOMEONE to be in charge – even if that someone is a malicious entity working for their own ends. If there is order – even evil order – then we have some chance, some option or control in how to deal with that order.

Without it, we’re confronted with existential or spiritual crisis on a level beyond my ability to tackle here. And no one wants that. Better the Jews did it. Or the Mafia. Or Aliens.

Our urban legends and historical mythologies resonate for a reason. I respectfully suggest it’s worth paying more attention to those reasons, and to the potentially useful or provocative truths woven therein.

After that, of course, you can roll your eyes, look a bit put out, and begin to explain: “You know, that never actually happened…”