M&D Deep Duck Read. Father of Lies.

[Mark Kohut]

p. 7. 'An Herodotic web of Adventures and Curiosities"

Heroditic Web....Herodotus famous for mixing make-believe with Real
History. This points forward to the 'folksy' yet 'international'
outlook typical of Herodotus. Yet, one modern scholar has described
the work of Hecataeus as "a curious false start to history"[7]
because, despite its critical spirit, it failed to liberate history
from myth. Just as Homer drew extensively on a tradition of oral
poetry, sung by wandering minstrels, so Herodotus appears to have
drawn on an Ionian tradition of story-telling, collecting and
interpreting the oral histories he chanced upon in his travels. These
oral histories often contained folk-tale motifs and demonstrated a
moral, yet they also contained substantial facts relating to
geography, anthropology and history, all compiled by Herodotus in an
entertaining style and format.[17] It is on account of the many
strange stories and the folk-tales he reported that his critics in
early modern times branded him 'The Father of Lies'.[18][19] Even his
own contemporaries found reason to scoff at his achievement.

Even Pliny, one of the kids listening to Cherrycoke, whose Roman
namesake survives in Collected Letters---evidently on a slight upsurge
reevaluation in academic attention---is said to have more 'ideas' than
reliable autobiography in those letters.

Ideas of America, fully ironized.  from a novelist of ideas.
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