pynchon-l-digest V2 #1838

[Doug Millison]

If Mackin reads the DeLong review closely he will see that DeLong 
uses the examples of Gibbon and Taylor (as I've quoted) and other 
historians in comparison and contrast to Holocaust denier Irving's 
approach, which is to falsify history by lying about primary sources 
and to let his political beliefs distort his presentation.

DeLong uses Evans' criteria to call into question Taylor's 
credentials as an historian:  "According to Evans's 
categorization--with its stress on being a truthful voice of the 
documents and other primary evidence--Irving was not a historian at 
all, or not a very
good historian. (Of course, it is hard to see how A.J.P. Taylor can maintain
his reputation in Evans's eyes, given the passages on the Hossbach
memorandum in Origins of the Second World War.)"  Elsewhere in the 
review DeLong judges: "And A.J.P. Taylor's Origins of World War II is 
ultimately a failure because its psychological picture of Hitler's 
motivations and aims is inconsistent with what else we know about 
Hitler from primary sources outside the book. "

DeLong asks:  "So how can Evans draw a bright, distinguishing line 
between historians like Thucydides, Syme, Taylor, and 
Gibbon--more-than-reputable historians, great
historians--all of whom go beyond the boundaries of their evidence in one
way or another, and David Irving? "

And DeLong answers: "So it seems to me that ultimately Evans's 
attempt to draw a bright line between Irving and the historians 
fails. When Watt worries that the forces
unleashed by the Irving trial will impinge on the reputation of historians
like Gibbon and Taylor who "allowed their political agenda... to influence
their professional practice," and who used the available primary evidence
selectively and tendentiously, he is right: it will. Misquotation and
mistranslation are greater sins against Clio than merely averting one's eyes
from pieces of evidence, or telling history to make a particular point
rather rather than as it really happened. But they are not the only sins."

DeLong's article was interesting to me, especially after the lengthy 
and often vociferous discussion here over such questions whether or 
not Pynchon depicts the Holocaust in GR, whether or not the Dora 
victims are Holocaust victims, because of the way that Taylor's 
history has been used in this forum to buttress an argument that 
Pynchon depicts WWII in such a way in GR as to exculpate the Nazis 
for starting the war and for their war crimes.  I think it's useful 
to point out that Taylor's credibility in this respect has been 
questioned.  As DeLong says, "Now Taylor's history is not history as 
it really happened. All you have to do is glance an inch beyond the 
frame of Taylor's picture--at Nazi domestic policy and the Night of 
Broken Glass, or at Hitler's conduct of World War II--and you find 
events grossly and totally inconsistent with Taylor's portrait of an 
opportunist looking for diplomatic victories on the cheap. Taylor's 
Hitler would never have widened the war by attacking the Soviet Union 
and declaring war on the United States, or weakened his own military 
resources by exterminating six million Jews, four million Russian 
prisoners of war, and millions of others rather than putting them to 
work in the factories making tanks and ammunition. Nevertheless, you 
can learn a lot
from Origins..."

I think this thread is worth pursuing because of the obvious 
significance that Pynchon gives to the question of what is history 
and history's relation to fiction.









>
>Date: Thu, 24 May 2001 02:08:37 -0400
>From: "Paul Mackin" <paul.mackin at verizon.net>
>Subject: Re: only facts, no interpretations
>
>- ----- Original Message -----
>From: "Doug Millison" <millison at online-journalist.com>
>
>
>>  It's hard to know what Mackin's beef with DeLong or Evans might be,
>
>My objection wasn't especially with DeLong or Evans but with Millison,
>specifically his " this sort of argumentation relates to the historial
>approach of Holocaust deniers" referring to Taylor and others. Millison may
>have spoken in ignorance thinking Taylor really was a Hitler sympathizer.
>Of course such a charge wasn't made in the article but only that Taylor was
>a historian purportedly influenced in his findings by his political
>position. However Millison quickly latched onto the sloppy writing of DeLong
>to lob the Holocaust Denier epithet at one more convenient and innocent
>target of opportunity. This behavior makes one wonder. I don't say he's
>nuts. He just sounds nuts.
>
>                 P.
>
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