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Dark Cloud
Brigadier General
USA
Status: offline |
 Posted - February 17 2006 : 08:33:09 AM
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The ride, at this point, is as if to the corner drugstore and back. I know the trail and the predictable addition of new steaming muffins to supplant ones fading in memory doesn't improve the experience. If anything ever emerges that defeats that assumption, I'll certainly say so.
The major differences between authors and works you suggest isn't just style but content, history and fiction. You don't seem to feel the distinction important if you note it at all. |
Dark Cloud
copyright RL MacLeod
darkcloud@darkendeavors.com
www.darkendeavors.com
www.boulderlout.com |
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movingrobewoman
Lt. Colonel
USA
Status: offline |
Posted - February 19 2006 : 10:17:10 PM
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Cloud--
With each reading experience, we--as individuals--have to decide what rings true to US and interpret it. All history is interpretation, filtered through our individual upbringings and political/societal outlook. I admit I'm more into the gossipy stuff when it comes to GAC, and despite its negativity, I felt "Glory Hunter" touched upon some truths of the Custer character. "Cavalier In Buckskin" did the same thing. When my Navajo grandfather used to glorify books with beautiful narratives--just like he called virga "dancing rains"--I had no idea of which he spoke. I can now appreciate such a thing and, at the same time, accept its limits. Just like life, writing is not an experience in black or white; it is an exploration in the shades of grey. But I appreciate the new thoughts, the new interpretations, the new questions--just as I appreciate the wordsmithery. We make our individual decisions in the process, and letting entire books go unread because their end theories are predictible forces one to ignore a host of issues. Whether they are good or bad is up to we, the readers.
Ya'ta'he'ey! |
movingrobe |
Edited by - movingrobewoman on February 19 2006 10:21:50 PM |
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AZ Ranger
Brigadier General
USA
Status: offline |
Posted - February 20 2006 : 10:08:53 AM
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| MGW-With each reading experience, we--as individuals--have to decide what rings true to US and interpret it. All history is interpretation, filtered through our individual upbringings and political/societal outlook. History shouldn't be interpretation it should be facts. Why it happened is open to interpretation. There are history books in schools stating the army lost over 600 cavalry at LBH. That is not history. Once the author stated that as fact you can guess what his statements about Custer were in regards to his personality. Writing a novel is different and the author has free rein. Except a "historic" novel of real persons and events then if the author distorts known facts I feel they are being intellectually dishonest. Someone could write a novel that Custer wins and saves Terry from the clutches of death as Terry makes his last stand with Gibbons dead body at his feet. That would be intellectually dishonest in my opinion. |
“ An officer's first duty is to his horses.”
SEMPER FI |
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Dark Cloud
Brigadier General
USA
Status: offline |
Posted - February 20 2006 : 10:49:04 AM
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This isn't the point, here, though. And neither of you contest my theory.
Regardless of what is good or bad elsewhere, in Custerland it is utterly predictable, and a review can be written on upcoming Custer books without actually reading them with a high rate of accuracy. That is because 1.) there's nothing new and won't be and 2. most Custer books are about the author and his/her issues, and these are readily apparent by meeting him or reading his previous work in the form of various boilerplate prejudices which carry over into other modern events. Knowing the author's statements on other issues is nearly foolproof tracing his opinion back on Custer. Nearly so, but there are exceptions.
That said, history is ALL interpretation, starting with whether or not informational nuggets are "fact." Wright Morris, a favored novelist, said that "anything filtered through memory is fiction," which is mostly hyperbole but fact at its core. People in trauma remember things out of sequence and differently one from the other. The military learned long ago that two men in a foxhole under fire for however long will emerge with different stories but both honest as they can be. Those stories as the years pass will change, sometimes to mesh together and start to include aspects they've learned about the battle since, sometimes to diverge. They are not lying, they're human. The historian can make the decision to believe one over the other, but "fact" without interpretation has already left for the holidays. |
Dark Cloud
copyright RL MacLeod
darkcloud@darkendeavors.com
www.darkendeavors.com
www.boulderlout.com |
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AZ Ranger
Brigadier General
USA
Status: offline |
Posted - February 20 2006 : 11:46:23 AM
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"That said, history is ALL interpretation, starting with whether or not informational nuggets are "fact." Wright Morris, a favored novelist, said that "anything filtered through memory is fiction," which is mostly hyperbole but fact at its core. People in trauma remember things out of sequence and differently one from the other. The military learned long ago that two men in a foxhole under fire for however long will emerge with different stories but both honest as they can be. Those stories as the years pass will change, sometimes to mesh together and start to include aspects they've learned about the battle since, sometimes to diverge. They are not lying, they're human. The historian can make the decision to believe one over the other, but "fact" without interpretation has already left for the holidays."
I do agree with your basic premise of this thread. That being said I would agree that written history is sometimes left to only observations of persons and oral histories can even be worse through time. I learned also from interviewing people that their perception of what they saw and what really happened can be two different things. They are not lying but actually believe what they think they saw. Relying solely on one persons observation in a court without any other evidence can lead to false conclusions. Eye witness testimony is not accepted as fact in a court.
To me written history first should be something that really happened in the past with a chronological listing of events and explanations of what happened. It is fine to use interpretation in in the explanation. It is not OK to distort known facts. Again my example was in a textbook my son had in high school. It stated that over 600 soldiers died at LBH. It is not history rather it is a fabrication.
George Washington was elected our first and found in history books or is it just an informational nugget taken as "fact." Sadly, I believe more purported written history is as you say rather than what I would like it to be.
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“ An officer's first duty is to his horses.”
SEMPER FI |
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Dark Cloud
Brigadier General
USA
Status: offline |
Posted - February 20 2006 : 2:09:15 PM
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We're not in disagreement except I'm less willing to accord 'fact' status, I think.
I don't contest the likes of Washington being the first prez, because there is no althernate argument and rather a ton of supporting evidence. But that's somewhat above the levels of controversy. Was he a GOOD President? A GOOD General? Was he one of a kind, or would a number of Americans have obeyed an elected assembly of their social inferiors and walked away four times from complete military control of their nation perfectly willing to make him ruler for life? I don't want to argue either way, but those are the sort of questions where ascertaining fact from opinion becomes difficult.
These are also the sort of questions absent from discussion of LBH and Custer. I tried to install one such, by pointing out that the descriptions and stories of the LBH follow long established literary templates, if often contradictory, almost ALL of which are unknown or unsuspected by those who often write about Custer. I doubt Mr. Cross (author of the thigh squeezer Harrington! The Bestest and Most Bravest Fighter the Sioux EVEREVER FOUGHT!!!) can speak at length about Roland or Arthur or northern European myth but his book, which I haven't read, is likely to draw twentieth hand from those traditions more than from, as we say, 'fact.' He's composing to fill an emotional need of his own and, he hopes, others. He may be correct, but he'd never admit or participate in such a discussion.
These authors spend time trying to fit found artifacts, themselves unproven connected to the battle, to what they consider factual testimony when it wasn't intended as such or received as such by the folks at the time. That they don't think it important speaks to their predictability. I don't exclude Fox and Scott, but they have the cover of excessive detail which tends to hide their basic weakness: an inability to prove whether those cartridges were found where they dropped on June 25, 1876, and to exclude the alternative explanations for their locations and presence at all. |
Dark Cloud
copyright RL MacLeod
darkcloud@darkendeavors.com
www.darkendeavors.com
www.boulderlout.com |
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movingrobewoman
Lt. Colonel
USA
Status: offline |
Posted - February 20 2006 : 3:23:52 PM
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AZ--
Actually, there is a place for a "Custer Wins" scenario. It's called Alternative History and Harry Turtledove (not his real name), who is a history professor at UCLA, is probably the best in the business. Yes, he teaches history. What bothers me is when self-appointed experts (and there's one at every Custer board) think that the readers of fiction cannot discern between truth and reality. Fiction at its best can inspire the erstwhile reader to research the subject further, and that is ALWAYS a good thing. In my own writing, I try to touch upon truths to Custer's character--within a fictional setting--but I leave opinion to the reader's own involvement with his personality. Some like him, some do not--but there's rarely no reaction to his being. Hopefully some will want to know more about him and they'll learn that only 260 men died at LBH (give or take a few).
But there are nuggets of truth in all Custeriana--even in the most predictable--as much as Dark Cloud will proport to the opposite. It's a matter of going out to the river and panning about for the gold. Or the gold that rings true to them. How about Libbie? Did she not interpret her husband through her rose-coloured glasses? Is she not as guilty as Van de Water in shadowing the Custer truth?
Regards, |
movingrobe |
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Dark Cloud
Brigadier General
USA
Status: offline |
Posted - February 20 2006 : 4:19:33 PM
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Fascinating. What is the difference between truth and reality? There's a thesis. In any case, there are no self-appointed experts hereabouts. I've claimed the exact opposite for myself.
I've never said there was no truth in Custer books, much less claimed the opposite. There's no such word as proport. I don't consider Mrs. Custer truthful, but she is a good writer.
Deliberate fiction is rarely at its best around Custer and the LBH. I've seen nothing to change my mind on that. |
Dark Cloud
copyright RL MacLeod
darkcloud@darkendeavors.com
www.darkendeavors.com
www.boulderlout.com |
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wILD I
Brigadier General
Ireland
Status: offline |
Posted - February 28 2006 : 3:27:21 PM
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What is the difference between truth and reality?
Reality is truth defined. |
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AZ Ranger
Brigadier General
USA
Status: offline |
Posted - February 28 2006 : 9:42:30 PM
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| MGW--the readers of fiction cannot discern between truth and reality You lost me here. Isn't reality and the truth on the same side of discernment with fiction on the other? |
“ An officer's first duty is to his horses.”
SEMPER FI |
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Dark Cloud
Brigadier General
USA
Status: offline |
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Dark Cloud
Brigadier General
USA
Status: offline |
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AZ Ranger
Brigadier General
USA
Status: offline |
Posted - July 19 2006 : 10:40:03 AM
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| DC A new book out seems to prove your point. |
“ An officer's first duty is to his horses.”
SEMPER FI |
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Book Reviews of Unread Books
