My History 34 Honors Seminar blog

History by the Ounce - Barbara W. Tuchman - week 1

This is the second essay that I'm supposed to read for tomorrow's class. I continue to believe that Tuchman has a very conversational tone which makes her essays very readable.

She uses a whole lot of imagery in her writing. She's saying 'pretend you're in 1914 and you see the crowds of people coming at you. you see Churchill.' I know that doesn't make much sense but it does to me.. but all she talks about HAS to be true. she gets her information from primary sources. she even uses novels and memoirs because she feels that since the people writing these memoirs and novels were THERE so obviously, they'll know more than someone who wasn't there at that specific historical event of some kind.

Here are quotes and areas I found interesting:

"However persuaded the historian may be of the validity of the theories he conceives, if they are not supported and illustrated by corroborative detail they are of no more value as history than Pooh-Bah's report of the imagined execution."(top of page 34)

continued.. "It is wiser, I believe, to arrive at theory by way of the evidence rather than the other way around, like so many revisionists today. It is more rewarding, in any case, to assemble the facts first and, in the process of arranging them in narrative form, to discover a theory or a historical generalization emerging of its own accord. This to me is the excitement, the built-in treasure hunt, of writing history." (3rd paragraph on page 34)

I understand this may seem weird or stupid, but I know this quote is important but I don't fully comprehend it and exactly get why... here it is:

"I am a disciple of the ounce because I mistrust history in gallon jugs whose purveyors are more concerned with establishing the meaning and purpose of history than with what happened. Is it necessary to insist on a purpose? No one asks the novelist why he writes novels or the poet what is his purpose in writing poems. The lilies of the field, as I remember, were not required to have a demonstrable purpose. Why cannot history be studied and written and read for its own sake, as the record of human behavior, the most fascinating subject of all? Insistence on a purpose turns the historian into a prophet--and that is another profession." (top of page 35)

I'm not sure exactly how to answer her questions. I know she's not asking me to and I don't need to answer them but I want to! I don't fully understand what purpose is in the question, "Is it necessary to insist on a purpose?" like I want to write a historic book on World War II because I know a lot about it (not that I do)? But that doesn't make sense... ugh. I'm going to talk this over with my dad after I finish this post. Okay, moving on...

"Corroborative detail will not produce a generalization every time, but it will often reveal a historical truth, besides keeping one grounded in historical reality." (second full paragraph on page 35)

Tuchman discusses a piece of historical corroborative detail she found... "It illustrates the society, the people, the state of feeling at the time more vividly than anything I could write and in shorter space, too, which is an additional advantage. It epitomizes, it crystallizes, it visualizes. The reader can see it; moreover, it sticks in his mind; it is memorable." (bottom of 2nd full paragraph on page 35)

Tuchman talks about something someone said in history and then says "--it was a case of detail not merely corroborating but revealing an aspect of history." (top of page 36) I made a note: that's what you're really looking for. not just truth but it reveals an aspect of history.

"When I come across a generalization or a general statement in history unsupported by illustration I am instantly on guard; my reaction is, 'Show me.' " (3rd full paragraph page 36) So she's saying she needs support and evidence for everything mentioned in a historic book.

I made a note saying: great thing/technique to do while writing on this next quote: "Imagining myself to be my own reader--a complicated fugue that goes on all the time at my desk--my reaction is of course, 'Show me.' The next two sentences I do." (top of page 37)

"Even if corroborative detail did not serve a valid historical purpose, its use makes a narrative more graphic and intelligible, more pleasurable to read, in short more readable. It assists communication, and communicate is, after all, the major purpose." (first full paragraph on page 37)

I think this is very important because it sums up a lot of what she says:

"History written in abstract terms communicates nothing to me. I cannot comprehend the abstract, and since a writer tends to create the reader in his own image, I assume my reader cannot comprehend it either... Certainly many serious thinkers write in the abstract and many people read them with interest and profit and even, I suppose, pleasure. I respect this ability, but I am unable to emulate it." (right after above quote on page 37)

I made another note: she fits in details that reflect personalities or something else.

And she discusses her cool notecard technique again.

WORDS.

"... I will only mention that the independent power of words to affect the writing of history is a thing to be watched out for. They have an almost frightening autonomous power to produce in the mind of the reader an image or idea that was not in the mind of the writer. Obviously, they operate this way in all forms of writing, but history is particularly sensitive because one has a duty to be accurate, and careless use of words can leave a false impression one had not intended." (page 38, second paragraph)

She goes on to say that many people got the wrong impression of Guns of August.

"One more hint before I leave it: For me the problem lies in the fact that the art of writing interests me as much as the art of history (and I hope it is not provocative to say that I think of history as an art, not a science). In writing I am seduced by the sound of words and by the interaction of their sound and sense... Unhappily, after finishing the paragraph [she had written a really nice sounding sentence], I was forced to admit that the incident in question had not irretrievably bent the twig of events. yet I hated to give up such a well-made phrase. Should I leave it in because it was good writing or take it out because it was not good history? History governed and it was lost to posterity (although, you notice, I have rescued it here). Am I writer first or am I historian? The old argument starts inside my head. yet there need not always be dichotomy or dispute. The two functions need not be, in fact should not be, at war. The goal is fusion. In the long run the best writer is the best historian." (bottom of page 38)

I included this whole thing in because I love it. it's a good question that everyone needs to answer (the writer or historian Q). This goes exactly with making documentaries or any videos, need to just keep what really makes sense and not if it only has great composition or a great angle.

"The most effective ounce of visual detail is that which indicates something of character or circumstance in addition to appearance." (middle of page 39)

"Novelists have the advantage that they can invent corroborative detail... they make up physical qualities to suit. The historian must make do with what he can find, though he may sometimes point up what he finds by calling on a familiar image in the mental baggage of the reader." (page 39) But be careful with this, the reader needs to KNOW and have an image in their head of the word or person. If not, then it doesn't work at all!!

"Perhaps this illustrates the distinction between a major and a less gifted novelist which should hold equally true, I believe, for historians. Ideas alone are not flesh and blood. Too often, scholarly history is written in terms of ideas rather than acts; it tells what people wrote instead of what they performed... If, however, one checks what they said and wrote against what actually was happening, a rather different picture emerges." (page 40) I think writers do this because it's just EASIER than doing what Tuchman does with all her research.

she recommends using novels for sources as well.

"I do not know if the professors would allow the use of such sources in a graduate dissertation, but I see no reason why a novelist should not supply as authentic material as a journalist or a general. To determine what may justifiably be used from a novel, one applies the same criterion as for any nonfiction account: If a particular item fits with what one knows of the time, the place, the circumstances, and the people, it is acceptable; otherwise not. For myself, I would rather quote Proust or Sackville-West or Zola than a professional colleague as is the academic habit. I could never see any sense whatever in referring to one's neighbor in the next university as a source. To me that is no source at all; I want to know where a given fact came from originally, not who use it last. As for referring to an earlier book of one's own as a source, this seems to me the ultimate absurdity." (page 41)

Many many points in this previous one. Reread it to fully understand!

"As to newspapers, I like them for period flavor perhaps more than for factual information... It is absolutely essential to take nothing from a newspaper without following the story through for several days or until it disappears from the news. For period flavor, however, newspapers are unsurpassed." (page 42)

"Women are a particularly good source for physical detail. They seem to notice it more than men or at any rate to consider it more worth reporting." (top of page 43)

"In the end, of course, the best place to find corroborative detail is on the sport itself, if it can be visited..." (page 43, second paragraph)

Last paragraph is good:

"The desire to find the significant detail plus the readiness to open his mind to it and let it report to him are half the historian's equipment. The other half, concerned with idea, point of view, the reason for writing, the "Why" of history, has been left out of this discussion although I am not unconscious that it looks in the background. The art of writing is the third half. If that list does not add up, it is because history is human behavior, not arithmetic." (last paragraph on page 44)

posted by Cassie @ 6:27 PM