I read recently a commentary on whether a license should be required of would-be historians. Accompanying this was an explanation of the typical rigors endured by the most admired of those erstwhile noble warriors in the war to preserve the past: the selfless vow of poverty requisite to living near a university library, the endless toils navigating the cruel landscapes of the card catalog, the intense confrontations with belligerent librarians behind their hardbound redoubts.
The article went on to describe the modern process of writing the history itself. The part I found most interesting was the cavalier approach imputed to many an acclaimed author, whereby one rummages through mountains of research only to discard the majority of it sight unseen and page unread in favor of the occasional marketable quotation or arresting sentence. The goal, it seemed, was to find the pay dirt and move on to the next one as quickly as possible.
To me it seems the unsettling implication of this approach is the conspicuous absence of an effort to fully know the complete story behind the history being written. To be sure, haters gonna hate and authors need to eat, so one must publish what one can so the reward befits the endeavor, but writer into historian that does not turn. Rather, it describes a journalist, by whose hand so much truth has been omitted and thereby lost to posterity.
