Wednesday, May 21, 2014

When a Historian's Opinions Don't Come With Citations

Reviewed: Creators: From Chaucer and Dürer to Picasso and Disney by Paul Johnson, 2007

Paul Johnson profiles a diverse range of individuals by assessing their creative work and, in some cases, providing “the dirt” on their personal lives. He certainly piqued my interest and left me with a desire to read Chaucer, but I was also frustrated by the difficulty of interpreting how much of his material was opinion and how much fact. I am all for historians allowing themselves to possess and display lively opinions. However, I also appreciate knowing their evidence and their reasoning. Because he speaks so authoritatively, Johnson’s work becomes less convincing as soon as one realizes that some of his unequivocal statements are debatable. For instance, he discusses the tragedy of Jane Austen’s death from Addison’s disease, and shares his frustration over the fact that, had she lived today, she could easily have been cured. However, according to Wikipedia, Austen’s diagnosis with Addison’s disease is only one tentative modern theory among several. Johnson also delivers announcements such as his claim the elderly Louis Comfort Tiffany was sexually active until the end. Yet I cannot help wondering whether Johnson has a witness to this, or merely theorizes it from the presence in Tiffany’s house of his mistress. In addition, Johnson tends to credit his “creators” with all subsequent similarities to their work, but I must counterclaim that, for example, Americans would still have delivered “one-liners” had Mark Twain never written.

As I read the book, I found myself increasingly inclined to discount or accept Johnson’s interpretations somewhat at random, based solely on my own preconceptions, which is not exactly a desirable way to learn history. I am ready enough to swallow his account of Pablo Picasso’s despicable and loathsome personal life because I myself do not care for the man’s art, but I question whether the portrait of Victor Hugo as an idiotic, egotistical hypocrite and turncoat is entirely fair, because I do admire Les Miserables (and surely the man that Johnson describes could not have written such an exploration of law versus mercy?).

However, I was fascinated by the author's interpretation of Picasso's role in art history. Johnson sees Picasso as transforming art from a representation of nature into something purely introspective, based entirely on fashion and therefore on continual change (he says that because Picasso is so easy to copy, even the artist himself did not always know which works were his own, and that the value of his pieces depends entirely on proper authentication: they have no intrinsic beauty or value). The idea that art, like couture, is now based on fashion is illuminating and provides a way to understand the modern art movement. The flow of fashion can be mystifying ("Why are intelligent girls wearing tights as pants?"), and so can the flow of modern art ("Why is that particular canvas/string cheese/bottle on a pedestal considered art by intelligent people?"). 

Creators is interesting. Johnson makes it so. Some would argue that my desire for further research proves the book to be a success. However, for me, at least, he did not make it entirely satisfying. He reminds me of various people I have known who were good storytellers. Their accounts of personal experiences were always fascinating and entertaining, but the details tended to change with each telling. They were not the sort of people who would lie, but they were also not the sort of people who always restricted themselves to facts of which they were fully certain.

Is this fair? Or am I maligning Johnson?


Read more reviews at the Housewifespice linkup!

11 comments:

  1. I doubt that Johnson would take it as maligning. He is and sees himself as a historian in the Herodotus mold. The point of historiography is to tell a story with a point for the reader. Sometimes elevating the point means cleaning up the story line. (Something like Obama's composite characters in his autobiography). Although with Johnson (I had the same take with Modern Times and a History of the American People) what I'd say is he's got all the stories, all the pieces are true, but they might not all have taken place in one moment, or he places equal weight to hearsay and conjecture as to public documented facts. It all adds up to something that drives modern academic historians nuts. And he likes it that way.

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    1. That's a good way of putting it. Someone has to stir up academic historians (they've swung far too far the other way), but I have to admit that I prefer Jacques Barzun, who is more upfront about his efforts to support a particular thesis or outlook.

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  2. He is entertaining, it's true. When I read this book I wondered how anyone could know so much and be so strong in his opinions. Some chapters in the book weren't as interesting to me as others - I was most fascinated by his comparison of Picasso and Disney, the latter whom he considered far more creative!

    I started reading his History of Christianity and also A History of the American People. They both revealed his personal engagement with his subject, and were some of the first history books I read that weren't the awful textbooks of my youth. I love how that enthusiasm comes through his writing.

    After Intellectuals and Creators comes Heroes - you've reminded me that I want to read that one.

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    1. Yes, he did make me want to go and watch the old Disney cartoons! I haven't seen most of them in years, and some I never saw. Since a fair bit of Creators is negative, I'm curious to know how he handles "heroes."

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  3. He sounds like my dad. My dad likes to tell the bizarre little known version of historical events, no matter how many times I tell him that Snopes.com says he's wrong.

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  4. I can see the temptation to present one's informed opinions as fact without using hedge words such as "many historians believe that" or "it seems as if". It certainly makes for a stronger, more engaging text. However, I really appreciate knowing what is fiction and what is fact in my historical fiction reading, and I think a book like this one where I couldn't really sort out opinion from truth would make me a little crazy.

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  5. He reminds me of Chesterton, in one way, as Chesterton often pulled facts from memory (he had a great one) and got them slightly wrong. Chesterton was a journalist, however, and his frequent production and "skimming-the-surface-of-the-topic" style, in his short pieces at least, makes this excusable, in my opinion. I wonder if Johnson doesn't write in the style of a time where citations weren't the norm. . . Anyway, you're not maligning, just giving feedback! It would be a shame if his good writings and observations were dismissed because others were found to be false or exaggerated.

    I've never met him myself (only married four years), but he's my husband's great-uncle. A cousin got a signed copy of his autobiography for Afon when I asked her, and the only reason I mention it is because she (the cousin) had marked and written separately the places in the book which were in error, as she knew from her mother, Uncle Paul's sister. I wonder if he changed them on purpose to make for a more interesting story or if it was actually how he remembered things!

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    1. After reading the comments above, it seems more likely he writes in the creative nonfiction style!

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    2. Christie, what a neat family connection! That is fascinating.

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  6. I agree, that we should be very careful when we refer to the "facts". We can "authoritatively" speak out loud about opinions, because no matter what they are "opinions", but facts have to be facts, need to show to readers where they came from, otherwise, they only deserve to be "rumors".

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