History in M&D (was Re: Internet Perfidity)

[Steven Maas (CUTR)]

David Casseres wrote:
> I wish I had my copy of M&D with me.  Somewhere not too long before p. 
> 400 is Cherrycoke's own musing about History, mostly about what it is not 
> -- neither the recording of facts nor "Remembrance, which belongs to the 
> People."  It seems to me the novelist's art, at least in Pynchon's case, 
> is closer to Remembrance, in this sense, than to history -- though 
> fiction mingles with both.

The passage in question (thanks to Greg M. who sent it some time ago in a
post on a different topic):

(Page 349) Facts are but the Play-things of lawyers,--Tops and Hoops,
forever a-spin....  Alas, the Historian may indulge no such idle Rotating. 
History is not Chronology, for that is left to lawyers,--nor is it
Remembrance, for Remembrance belongs to the People.  History can as little
pretend to the Veracity of the one, as claim the Power of the other,--her
Practitioners, to survive, must soon learn the arts of the quidnunc, spy
and Taproom Wit,--that there may ever continue more than one life-line
back into a Past we risk, each day, losing our forbears in forever,--not a
Chain of single Links, for one broken Link could lose us All,--rather, a
great disorderly Tangle of Lines, long and short, weak and strong,
vanishing into the Mnemonick Deep, with only their Destination in common. 

	--The Rev'd Wicks Cherrycoke, _Christ and History_

As David says this passage tells us what History *is not*--but does it
tell us what it *is*?  It doesn't seem to, rather it says what the
*purpose* of History is and apparently leaves it up to us to then figure
out the rest.  I'm still workin' on tha'. . . 

	Steve Maas