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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (45829)	7/16/1999 11:31:00 AM
From: Father Terrence	Respond to of 108807

The Arms of Krupp was excellent. I read that in high school too. Another good one was The Desert Fox.

To: epicure who wrote (45829)	7/16/1999 12:06:00 PM
From: jbe	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 108807

It is hard to find good historical writing. Well, actually, there is more out there than you might think, X. But I'll grant there is a problem, at least in this country. Academics here often pooh-pooh "good prose," and some actively discourage it in their graduate students. I remember the guy who taught Philosophy of History at Columbia, for example: a Dutchman, addicted to "scientific models," he warned us all that if we wrote "beautiful" prose, he would suspect us of using it to cover over our methodological weakness. This is precisely what many writers of "popular history" do, of course. I cannot read Barbara Tuchmann, for example, because she constantly irritates me by inserting thoughts in her subjects' heads. "As he sat there, Bismarck thought: 'Blah, blah, blah..'" How does she know what Bismarck thought? Is she speculating about what he might have thought? Or is she simply paraphrasing something he actually wrote? But what you write is not necessarily what you really think. The point is that putting thoughts in your subjects' heads makes a better story, even if it is worse history. This might seem like hair-splitting to the general reader, who might prefer being entertained to being instructed, but it is a very serious matter for professional historians. Hence the animus against "fancy" prose. In England, for a variety of reasons, you won't see this kind of split between "professional" and "popular" historians. The former almost uniformly write graceful prose, and sometimes truly great prose. The tradition starts with Gibbon, after all. In short, there is plenty of excellent historical writing out there. You just have to know where to look for it. Joan

To: epicure who wrote (45829)	7/16/1999 11:58:00 PM
From: coug	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

X, I agree.. A person has to live what they write to make it alive.. Most of the people i like never went to college, at least were never Phds in literature.. It becomes too sterile.. Thats why IMO, academics make poor writers .. and the best writers were poor in the technical sense... Academia can study it and dissect it but thats about all... All I can say, you have live it to report it in what ever manner.. And it takes a special person to want to live and push the envelope.. You always have it on the line. or most of it First of all the great writers were adventuresome, freespirited and imaginative.. thats what make great reading.. A stifling environment will not allow it and a person of the above traits will not enter.. or allowed in.. maybe late in life or posthumously or once academia catches up with their popularity.. Good evening..... the Coug