Telling History vs. Making Art: Fictions Told Until They are Believed to be True
“Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true,” Ulysses S. Grant said in his Personal Memoirs.
Grant was specifically referring to a fiction “based on a slight foundation of fact” from Appomattox Court House, where Robert E. Lee’s army surrendered. The formal surrender took place in the home of Wilmer McLean in the heart of the small village, but a legend grew that the surrender actually took place beneath an apple tree. “Like many other stories,” Grant said, “it would be very good if it was only true.” Like a modern game of telephone, where a story evolves in the telling from one person to another, a kernel of fact grew into something totally beyond itself and subsequently became accepted as truth.
“The truth of an account is measured by the conviction the writer builds in the reader’s mind,” Paul Ashdown reminds us. Facts evolve into fictions, and through repetition, become accepted as truths.
Read on, Macduff, at Emerging Civil War.
Grant was specifically referring to a fiction “based on a slight foundation of fact” from Appomattox Court House, where Robert E. Lee’s army surrendered. The formal surrender took place in the home of Wilmer McLean in the heart of the small village, but a legend grew that the surrender actually took place beneath an apple tree. “Like many other stories,” Grant said, “it would be very good if it was only true.” Like a modern game of telephone, where a story evolves in the telling from one person to another, a kernel of fact grew into something totally beyond itself and subsequently became accepted as truth.
“The truth of an account is measured by the conviction the writer builds in the reader’s mind,” Paul Ashdown reminds us. Facts evolve into fictions, and through repetition, become accepted as truths.
Read on, Macduff, at Emerging Civil War.