Updike Was The First To

History Isn't A Seesaw. If You Have A Really Bad Regime On One Side, The Actions On The Other Side Don't Automatically Become Good. It Doesn't Work That Way.

The Force Of Truth That A Statement Imparts, Then, Its Prominence Among The Hordes Of Recorded Observations That I May Optionally Apply To My Own Life, Depends, In Addition To The Sense That It Is Argumentatively Defensible, On The Sense That Someone Like Me, And Someone I Like, Whose Voice Is Audible And Who Is At Least Notionally In The Same Room With Me, Does Or Can Possibly Hold It To Be Compellingly True.

In Fact, You Could Make The Argument That A Historian Like Shlomo Aronson Does In Passing In One Of His Books, That The Bombing Campaign United The German Nation Behind Hitler, And Actually Contributed To The Sustaining Of His Power.

I Wrote About World War Ii Because I Didn't Understand It. I Think That's The Reason That Historians Are Drawn To Any Subject - There's Something About It That Doesn't Make Sense. I Wanted To Work My Way Through What Happened Slowly, And Look At Everything In The Order In Which It Took Place.

Sometimes I Think With The Telephone That If I Concentrate Enough I Could Pour Myself Into It And I'd Be Turned Into A Mist And I Would Rematerialize In The Room Of The Person I'm Talking To. Is That Too Odd For You?