A case can be made that all history is fiction. The words written in volumes designated as history books is widened for our purposes to encompass documentaries, which include news reporting, constructed documentaries such as Ken Burns’ Civil War, videos and movies categorized as true stories.  We will define recorded history a version of what has happened as perceived by one or more interested people. Most of these interested people believe that what they are recording is accurate. Writers have differing ideas on the role their own values and beliefs play in the discourse. Many aim to be objective; some aim to persuade the reader to draw a particular conclusion. The receivers, the readers, bring their own tools and standards to the interpretation of what is being presented to them. How do we know what to believe, what to make of this information?

The amount of history that has been recorded is infinitesimal to the amount that has occurred. One might visualize recorded history represented by a grain of sand taken from the pile of all the sand that exists on earth. The large pile remaining represents unrecorded history. Allow yourself to think of how many stories might be told by, for instance, each of the twelve  million immigrants who floated past the Statue of Liberty, then were processed through Ellis Island on their way to an unknown epoch in the new world they had landed in. Add to that the tales from the generations of children born to them in this ever-changing new world.

The amount of history that occurred before recording it began is not known but it is speculated about and in that fashion, recorded. It sometimes happens that someone imagines what took place and writes about it, often building stories between happenings that were recorded earlier. Much of that information is rewritten when new light gets shed upon it and perceptions change. We may call those revisions updates.

All of our recorded history, particularly social history, is informed by the values and attitudes of those who documented it. It was not unusual, especially early on, for some societies to leave just a few permanent records behind. Those people often found oral tradition a treasured reality. Good storytellers had a great deal of influence on what was passed on to their descendants, just as people who wrote it down in some more permanent way gave shape to that particular information. “Tone” or attitude is likely to play a significant role when good storytellers are involved.  Perhaps because of the hands-on social nature of the task, good storytellers are inclined to embellish the tales they are interested in, that they judge to be important, or those that just tickle their fancy. Perhaps to a lesser degree, the same is true of those who make a more permanent record. Even when there is printed history by a people, culture or civilization, oral history will modify those records for individuals.  Generations of families take what is passed along to them and in turn pass on a slightly changed or meaningfully different version, perhaps something in between. Who is there to tell them how it should be? And so it goes.

In this context, family history deserves a look. Many families, particularly in the age we are a part of, have people who put together names and dates on family trees. Sometimes they make notes they consider important, reaching out to future generations so that those relatives-to-be may know and perhaps remember defining characteristics of family members they will never meet.

Our culture encourages memoir writing, a valuable addition to family lore.  How much of that writing is “true” is impossible to access. As we know, three people walking together may see the same scene differently – one sees a tree, another a budding apple tree, another doesn’t see the tree at all, but a dog that is running past the tree. Even the writer of the memoir cannot determine its “truth.” Adding to the overall complexity, at times the writer takes poetic license.

The concept of “permanent” merits consideration.  There is relatively little of the old stuff still around.  Much of it gets changed, updated, or lost in one way or another. The records that remain sometimes take on a myth-like value in the minds of those who believe them important enough to remember.

We may make new observations when looking back at a person in the past because of ongoing shifts in values. New views abound as people reconsider old lives from dim and distant happenings. A current book on the family of Benjamin Franklin traces the life of his younger sister, Jane, including some speculations about her which could only have come to life following dramatic shifts in gender evaluation, expectation and equality. One, like Jane, judged in an earlier time in one way can be seen as an altogether different person as time goes by.

It is useful in our look at the past to focus on the records of the lives of such individuals. Biographies are significant segments of our collective history.  They are considered non-fiction, an attribution that is easily questioned, since it is common to find different books about the same person that record conflicting information.  Military heroes, for example, and some political leaders and celebrities, are sometimes depicted as super-human, fault-free creatures, not only in books written for children. And negative views of those same people may come to life because of new information, unforeseen consequences, or conclusions drawn by unsympathetic critics. A good deal depends on timing. Clearly, not all these biographical accounts can be factual, though each one may contain some accurate details.

An objective biography may be impossible to find. Often the writer has strong personal convictions pertaining to the subject, that being one of the reasons they’re writing the book. As a reader who likes the genre, I appreciate writing by an author who admires or is intrigued by the subject, and aims to tell it all fairly.  We must remember that writers compose biography based on information available to them at the time. It is not unusual for the writer to alter the attitude they had going into the project after learning more about the subject. Rich sources of information often open later.

Some of the most popular biographies are written by people close to the subject, contemporaries or those who come soon after them. These authors often admire their subject, and take no pains to hide their regard. Knowing who the author is takes on some importance for the reader in the total search for accurate information on a subject. Relationships enter into evaluations. Close relatives sometimes don’t write their own book, but give information to the writer which shapes aspects of the biography that may not be accurate but which nonetheless spreads vital information. George Joyce’s insight pertaining to his sister given to Richard Ellman and included in Ellman’s biography of his father, James Joyce, is regarded by many in our time as distorted and misleading because of details on both Lucia and her brother that were disclosed later.

When looking at history, a most important lens is one that is somewhat blurred, one that has a strange and varied existence.  Some human history was simply regarded as not important because the people were not worthy. Various early historical accounts that were created were not considered useful, interesting, appropriate or necessary. For this and other reasons, these records were never completed, got lost, destroyed, or otherwise hidden and ended up not becoming a part of the big picture. An unknown amount of this kind of information still exists in a sort of underground world or is out there in unrecognized collections hidden in old boxes in the attic or as undigested relics in the museum. When I taught public high school English in the Chicago area years ago, an African American student brought me a book one day which contained graphic pictures of lynchings which had taken place in the United States in the days of Jim Crow. It was horribly disturbing, unforgettable. Records of such happenings have often been smothered or altered by those in power because letting them be known was deemed not prudent.

The word “history” can translate into — his story.  The uncirculated history of America which either does not exist outside of human experience or exists in small, mostly unknown forms, or was put aside and forgotten, is about a great number of people who were not important enough to have their stories included in the mainstream record – women, native people, slaves, freed slaves, immigrants, working children, the handicapped, and others. In one of our country’s most defining historical documents, “We, the people,” were, in fact, just a small segment of “We.”

         A quick look at the history that is taught in our primary schools weighs heavy with accounts of war and conquest, and, for the most part, assumes one point of view. These features, not touching the stories of the majority of people alive at a given time, together with the limited point of view that a nation’s history is often told from, point to a genus of work that can be called fictionalized history. It puts me in mind of a possible volume one might write about the animal kingdom which would give information exclusively about bears. Fictionalized history is clearly not an attempt to tell the whole story, rather a result of the conviction that worthy history is about some, not all, not nearly all.

Who gets to tell the story? At least some of what we call history is propaganda, the writer’s aim being to influence the present through anticipating the future and revisiting the past. Some rulers, or those wishing to rule, put forth their own version of past “truth” which serves their purposes.  Some spell out how they project the future will be when they are in power, including which types of books will be banned and what laws will be changed. Some promise to clean things up with neither a meaningful definition of the dirt nor an explanation of how this clean-up will be accomplished, or at what cost, with scant attention paid to which people will benefit from the changes and which lives will change for the worst. Perhaps the most insidious propaganda comes from those aspiring would-be leaders who promise to do one thing and if they gain power, do the opposite. Our ability to trust or not trust these people, these would-be leaders on whom our lives and the lives of our children depend, is their history, their past behavior. Actions take the accurate measure over words.

It is relatively easy to recognize another country’s propaganda, more difficult to piece together our own. We cannot be afraid to find and know our truth just because some people don’t want to hear it or because other people are determined to do our thinking for us and call upon us to believe their version of what they make up.  

We must be brave.  We have to think for ourselves, find our truth, and trust in our thinking enough to let it guide our actions.  There are many like us who are capable of recognizing valid statements about our country’s past, including our still unresolved issues. The recognition comes not because we want it to be that way, but rather because we are decent people and will not deny what unfolds in front of us and pretend it is something else.  Our experience in the past along with what we are living through here and now, give clear confirmation of failings and shortcomings. That said, it is just as important to recognize the magnitude of our nation’s achievements, due in large measure to the existence of a guiding, not perfect, Constitution. We have gotten along thanks to the commitment of enough brave and selfless leaders.  Our forefathers counted on clear thinking and good will when they created their, and our, system of government. Let us move forward in that direction!

It’s not easy being a melting pot – a pot that started heating up on a small, open wood fire and has grown into a cauldron of great size, dealing with disparate fuels and precarious flames. I believe that we must remind ourselves that we are all in this pot together.

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