Hollywood Ending

Stories are Truer than The Truth.

....with a Hollywood Ending.

“Why do we hate those guys [The Police] when we put them there?

Why do we hate ourselves for creating this society?

Why are so many people in America obsessed with Marilyn Manson; corpses; dead people; misery; John Wayne Gacy… John Wayne Gacy’s a fucking prick. Y’know, he killed a few people and did some shitty paintings. What’s that? Why should we be engaged with that? And yet that has become.. what, “Apocalypse Culture“?

Where do we go from there, that isn’t that? Where do we go that isn’t playing with our own shite?

The Answer… back to the individual.

If the individual doesn’t work – if Patrick McGoohan was wrong; Number 6 was wrong to stand on that beach screaming “I am not a number, I am a free man!” – what do we have left?

Because ultimately the guy who’s not a number and not a free man experiences neurosis, the longer he goes down that path. I’m sure there’s a bunch of people here, like me, who eventually… you’ve worked your way through this stuff; you’ve read the books, you’ve done this shit; you’ve taken the drugs; you’ve been there, you’ve seen it. We’ve all experienced enlightenment in little bits. You know it’s out there; you know this stuff is True: the consensus doesn’t explain our lives. 

But what does?”

Let Me Tell You a Story.....

I, Herodotus of Halicarnassus, am here setting forth my history, that time may not draw the color from what man has brought into being, nor those great and wonderful deeds manifested by both the Greeks and the barbarians, fail of their report, and together, with all of this, the reason why they fought one another.

"Don't you remember what I said about The Truth? 

Stories are Truer than The Truth."

It turns out “Jest” doesn’t mean “Joke” —

A Jester is a disguised Bard passing for a Fool.

It turns out “Jest” means “narrative” — or “history”, or “ideology”, or “WorldView”.

" And I want to quote for you, to you, from the oldest history book in Western Civilisation. 

Not just because it’s a book, but I think this is a point one can make about any history course, it doesn’t matter what the subject is. 

It can be Social History, Political History, Intellectual History, any history. 

It can be the History of Ancient Rome, it could be Post-1945 United States, it could be any history. 

But any history course ought to do the two things that Herodotus named in the opening sentence of the oldest history book we have. 

This is Herodotus, The History. 

Isn’t it great when you’re writing the first book, what are you going to call it? The History! 

No subtitles, nothing fancy, just — 

“I, Herodotus of Halicarnassus, am here setting forth my history, that time may not draw the color from what man has brought into being, nor those great and wonderful deeds manifested by both the Greeks and the barbarians, fail of their report, and together, with all of this, the reason why they fought one another.”

I don’t know how closely you listened to that, but what has Herodotus just said? He’s basically said history is two things. 

It’s The Story, it’s the color, it’s the great deeds, it’s the narrative that takes you somewhere; 

But it’s also The Reason Why, it’s also the explanations. 

That’s what history does. It’s supposed to do both of those things. 

Some of us are more into the analysis, and we’re not so fond of Story. 

Some of us just love stories and don’t care about the analysis — 

“oh, stop giving me all that interpretation, just tell me the good story again.” 

This is what goes on, of course, out in public history all the time: 

“just tell us the old stories and just sing us the old songs, make us feel good again. 

Stop interpreting, you historians, and worst of all, stop revising.” 

You notice how that word ‘revision’ has crept into our political culture? 

When politicians don’t like the arguments of people who disagree with them they accuse them of being revisionist historians. 

It was even a poll-tested word for a while when Condoleezza Rice was using it. 

“Revisionist, revisionist.” 

As though all history isn’t revisionist.

My favorite story about revisionism is my buddy, Eric Foner, was on a talk show once. 

About 1992. He was on one of those shouting talk shows with Lynne Cheney, who at that — Dick Cheney’s wife — who was then head of the NEH. 

And this was a time — you won’t remember this — we were having this national brouhaha over what were called National History Standards. 

And Lynne Cheney, if you remember, a real critic of these National History Standards. She didn’t particularly like some of the ideas that the historians were coming up with. 

So on this talk show — it was Firing Line where you get two people on and they just shout at each other for an hour, or a half hour, and the producers love it. 

And Foner is pretty good at rapid fire coming back, he’s pretty good at it. 

Anyway they had this set-to and she kept accusing him and other historians of being “revisionist.” 

And Eric says the next morning he got a phone call from a reporter at Newsweek and she said, 

“Professor Foner, when did all this revisionism begin?” 

And Foner said, 

“Probably with Herodotus.” 

And the Newsweek reporter said, 

“Do you have his phone number...?” 

Never underestimate the ignorance of the American people.

 H.L. Mencken