James Goodman and Louis Masur: A Correspondence

12 Historically Speaking March/April 2008 Do You Need a License to Practice History? MilitaryAcademy, was the first history of the school that integrated the postgraduate careers of the graduates in America's various wars. Sometimes the "new" ingredient only becomes apparent when you've immersed yourself in a subject . I spent four years researching the year 1776. I had a mass of data but nothing that was really new. One day it struck me: both sides began the war with ruinously wrong strategies. The Americans thought they could win the war in one big batde, thanks to their superior numbers. The British thought that a few defeats inflicted on Washington's army would inspire thousands of (nonexistent) loyalists to emerge. After getting thrashed by a bigger British army in the Battle of Long Island in 1776, Washington had the brains to change America's strategy. From now on, he told the president of Congress, they would avoid an all-out battle. "Instead, we will protract the war." Suddenly I had my new angle of vision—and the tide of my book: 1776: Year of Illusions. Finding the new in history is what makes books exciting—both in fiction and in fact. Thomas Fleming is the author of more thanforty books of historicalfiction andfact. His latest book is The Perils of Peace: America's Struggle to Survive after Yorktown (Smithsonian Books, 2007). James Goodman and Louis Masur: A Correspondence Dear Lou, Dear Lou, Have you read Hochschild's essay? I just did, and in theory I should love it. How could I not? He says exacdywhatwe have been sayingand writingabout forever : academic historians ought to be writers as well as scholars. We should take style and form seriously, make history a literary as well as interpretive art, write books that our mothers and fathers might enjoy. Hochschild thinks we should borrow tools from novelists , playwrights, poets, and filmmakers. Get this: he even imagines a historian telling a true story from multiple points of view—as I did, fifteen years ago, in my first book. And he urges historians to teach graduate courses in the writing of history, which you and I—and most of our friends—have been doing for years. So why does the essay irritate me so? I have no sympathy whatsoever for the academic historians who, reflexively or simple-mindedly, dismiss out of hand the history that amateur historians and journalists and creative nonfiction writers write. So why do Ihavea sinkingfeelingthatHochschild's essayis likely to provide powerful ammunition for thosewho sneer at the idea of literary history or sophisticated popular history or who simply believe—to borrow Hochschild'sweakmetaphor—thatplumbers should stick to plumbing? -Jim DearJim, The essayirritates you because, frankly, it is not a particularlygood essay. Hochschild meanders all over the place, and in an attempt to be gracious to professional historians he offers a Whiggish vision (our graduate education was good for something, I guess) of progress in the academy toward "more rigorous, more accurate, and more thoughtful" writing than in the past. Please. If anything, thewriting of most professional historians has become more specialized, academicized , and largely irrelevant to any broader humanistic concerns. And for all the talk of storyFrancis Parkman. From Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History (Harper and Brothers, 1902), 69. telling, all the recognition that the boundaries between fact and fiction are indistinct, all the awareness that form conveys meaning, Hochschild holds dearly to some ideal of truth in historical writing. Let's face it: historians are notwriters. We've both pointed this outinprevious essays: your "FortheLove of Stories" and my "What It Will Take to Turn Historians into Writers." Hoschchild's definition of literaryhistoryis "historianswhowrite gracefully." That's a start, to be sure, but even in this category he manages to name one professional historian: Simon Schama. At least he's gotten thatmuch right. As thegolferBobbyJones once said of Jack Nickalus, "He plays a game with which I am not familiar." So might all writers say of Schama. (Hochschild also mentions Jill Lepore and Sean Wilentz, who certainly write accessible essays formainstream publications, butwhose books do not strive for literary art). And so I, too, am irritated. Irritated that...