*REPOST OF THE ORIGINAL TROUBLE-STARTER.* “My personal standard is that If someone represents, ‘A Beatle said this,’ it better damn well be something a Beatle said.”
Tag: historiography
Hi. Further study? (1–3)
Updated May 26. (22-5) Happy Sunday.
We find ourselves at a crossroads: The Mark Lewisohn Disaster
“The only obligation we owe to history is to rewrite it.” —Oscar Wilde
A TENDENCY TO FABRICATE HISTORY
The reason all historical associations put so much emphasis on historians being transparent is that they fully comprehend the power of the inherent trust—“the implicit assumption of honesty”—that we are forced to place in a historian. We have to trust that a relator of history is representing sources honestly and transparently because if readers cannot take that on faith historians cease to have value. The discipline of relating history collapses if we cannot trust The Historian.
DELUSIONAL LEWISOHN
The confidence with which Lewisohn recounts a series of events that only shows beyond all doubt that “the extraordinary story” he’s about to convey was not “unearthed,” but concocted—or dreamed—while clearly expecting the listener to see how it fits together and proves his narrative seems inexplicable to me by anything but delusion. Or if there is a rational explanation, it lies beyond my earthbound grasp.
A basic Lewisohn fabrication: add a coke, a few requests, and shove a retrospective opinion into Paul McCartney’s mouth (Ch 20-Footnote 18)
While perhaps not a murder, this rewrite is still a felony and shows many of the hallmarks of both Lewisohn’s worst as well as his more seemingly-innocuous butcheries. Specifically, they usually begin or end with a wholly invented line that Lewisohn uses as a thesis statement. And they all show an unbelievable disregard for truth and a license to insert and represent his own words as those of a historical figure that cannot fail to shock the conscience of a scholar.
Exact Words 