You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry

[erastes]

GRRRR….

I swear if I hear the phrase “as a historian….” ONE MORE TIME as a prelude to someone being smackingly patronising and “better than thou” I am going to chuck my PC in the skip and start writing with a quill. 

Over on the Historical Novel Society yahoo group, someone asked a very sensible question about historical facts or theories that change, as we all know they do.  What she said was should she change her work to the newly accepted theory regarding how her protagonist died, or stick with the old theory?  Sadly this point was almost entirely ignored as people dragged out the whole “historical accuracy vs THE DEVIL” argument and lo and behold one person in particular HAD to tell the whole world that they were not only a historian – BUT A LIVING HISTORIAN.  (as opposed to what, I really don’t know.)

Listen to me, you people.  Having a degree (and this might be a shock to you, so you might want to sit down) simply means you studied for a subject and passed an exam.  It doesn’t necessarily follow that 1. You know more about history (even the period you specialise in) than the person you are patronising, 2. You are more intelligent than others, no matter how often you tell them you are  and 3. Entitles you to ANY kind of special treatment and 4.  It makes you a better person in any aspect.  In fact, in my opinion, if you’ve had to drag “I’ve got xxxx degrees in xxx” into any discussion, then you’ve already lost it.

You’d think that after six or so years on LJ and elsewhere, I’d lose my capacity to be surprised at the inanities people will wank over, but I never get used to it.  Some people seem completely incapable of playing nicely with others, yesterday I saw instances of people leaving yahoo groups because they didn’t like the people they were in the group with, and people, who weren’t getting “OMG YOU ARE A HISTORIAN?  THEN YOU MUST BE RIGHT” responses, unsubscribing in a childish sulk.

I’ve often been cowed by these people, and there have been times when I wish I could put “Erastes read Super Smashing History at Terribly Posh College” on the back of my books but GAH. If it meant that I’d turn into someone who trots out their piece of paper to shit on people’s heads, then I’m glad I don’t.

In other depressing news – I hear Ugly Betty is cancelled, and the wonderful Bryan Batt isn’t being returned for Mad Men series 4. It makes sense for the story, of course, but I’ll miss him a lot.

  -   - - -

Comments

[vashtan.livejournal.com]

I try not to drag my summa cum laude degree in medieval history into any kind of discussion (so sorry if I've ever affronted you like that :) ). But it's probably true that I know more than almost everybody about how EXACTLY the Lombard kingdom was subsumed into Charlemagne's empire. Except, of course, 2 professors who worked on the topic.

Thing is, nobody cares about that tiny sliver of history that's mine.

"As a historian" really only means I have a "working knowledge" and a specialist library at home. I have a general understanding. I don't know all the facts, and more often than not, I have to check stuff against my own memory, because I have a terrible memory.

So, as a historian, I don't feel the need to wave my dick around. I'm glad people *are* interested enough in history to care. Seems to be rarer and rarer these days.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

The thing is I don't see why historians need to qualify their qualification in discussions and they do it all the time on writing groups, and it's always meant as a smackdown. They are rarely "I have a degree in 'xx era' it's just a general history degree. You do have a specialist degree - and you felt the need to point it out too!! :)

Your point kind of clarifies it, because I don't believe that anyone knows more than anyone else, certainly not one as young as you - there are bound to be others with more indepth knowledge, but perhaps they didn't bother to go to university, but they've been studying on a personal level all their life. My uncle for example was amazingly knowledgable about Gladstone and could probably have discussed the matter with any university professor, but never did - he was just a Gladstone geek.

[cassiopaya.livejournal.com]

Well, as an alive historian who has read everything about everything and went to a college where I got a degree I can honestly say that I am a better person than you because unlike you I can rise above the wank.

< /facetiousness >

Wow. I'm still shocked that yahoo groups are a viable internet communication format.

::huggles::

[erastes.livejournal.com]

You are better than me. * weep *

Even my grammar sucks.

[mylodon.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm a biologist. Which means that long ago and far away I did somethings about various parts of living animals. Some of it I remember, some I don't and some I have always 'busked'.

What it means in practice is

a) I take much of what I hear scientists say with a pinch of salt because they get things wrong and, as you say, theories evolve.

b) I get ridiculously excited over stupid things like phosphodiester bonds. Don't know a lot about them, but they make me squee.

c) I take historians with even more of a pinch of salt - as they do on Time Team. when all else fails, say it's "ritual" and you'll look clever.

[chris-smith-atr.livejournal.com]

Were the animals called "rugby players"?

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Yes - and on Time Team their knowledge makes them PSYCHIC. They can look at a sliver of pot and know what the villa looked like.

I don't have an 'ology.'

[cassiopaya.livejournal.com]

Phosphodiester bonds are *squee* worthy indeed!

[alex-beecroft.livejournal.com]

As a philosopher I'm constantly annoyed at the way people don't seem to know how to construct logical arguments these days but have to resort to fallacies like the appeal to their authority as a historian.

Oh, whoops....

[erastes.livejournal.com]

As an astrologer I shall smite them with Uranus.

[chris-smith-atr.livejournal.com]

As an architect, I demand erections!

[chris-smith-atr.livejournal.com]

Well said. Frankly I think that if you feel you require a public clarification of your reasons or qualifications to talk about any topic, let alone a work of fiction, it says a lot more about your personal insecurities than anything else.

I love writing. I enjoy the research. But I'm not going to shout that I'm a world expert in anything (even the really strange things in which I could pretend to be) because I don't feel the need, nor do I think readers really care. It's up to the author to determine how accurate they wish to be, and the agents, editors, and readers to decide the sellability of the work.

Frankly, the stuff I've read recently by "historians" (and i'm talking mainstream prizewinning, bestselling stuff) has things like people in 1066 jumping off and on horses at age 50, turbopowered horses that can do 8 hours gallop without a rest and still be fresh as a daisy, and a person in the 1200's who was (at age 75) pondering the joys of reaching 85.

If that is what "historians" write, I'm damn glad all I really care about is a rollicking good read.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. I've read stuff like that too, where the back blurb waxes lyrical about the degrees and job qualifications the person has, and then I'm jarred out of the first page because there's a sabre in 17th century England. (not real example)

In fact the only book where I was impressed by BOTH the qualifications and the book is the one I'm reading now - The Lunatic, the Lover and the Poet by Myrlin Hermes - she's touted to be an expert in Shakespeare and the sonnets and omg she so is. You know that episode of Dr Who with Shakespeare? Well it's a bit like that, but with the most beautiful writing too.

I was actually put off by the blurb and the scary qualifications, because of previous bad experiences but it's a very clever book.

[rwday.livejournal.com]

Well, as a librarian, (living, I think?) and a human being, I think they're full of themselves.

I remember one person in an SCA related group pontificating on and on about some topic in Renaissance art, bludgeoning everyone with their academic credentials. After a little digging, it was discovered that their field of study was Soviet Russia. Sorry. Historian =/= expert on all times and places.

[cassiopaya.livejournal.com]

In Soviet Russia the field studies you!

I fail. :(

[joannesopercook.livejournal.com]

My personal pet peeve (apart from the historian thing, which you mention and which always makes me LOL because, unless said person has a doctoral degree in history and/or is teaching at a university, they aren't actually an historian, merely someone who read history at uni) are the ones who like to trot out their supposedly enormous IQ scores as a way to validate their personal opinion of what I am qualified to write: "Well, I have the highest IQ in the entire known universe and I can tell you for a fact that you should never write anything longer than a short story."

Really? Jeez. Someone tell my publishers - obviously the 8 novels I've published must have slipped through the cracks somehow. o_O

I mean, I don't care if you IQ is off the charts; it is only one method of measuring intelligence and, as we know, performing well on standardised tests doesn't really mean jack shit in the real world. So while it's nice that you have an IQ of 578 and are the smartest person in the world, and while you're obviously wasting your time talking to me, I think I'll take your opinion with a very large grain of salt...

/rant

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Why would you give your work to such people? *boggles*

[vashtan.livejournal.com]

*snigger* Reminds me of an encounter with a second semester guy studying German literature at uni and telling me, as a young, still-at-school writer, that I "had no right" to write anything that I haven't experienced myself.

Welcome to shelves and shelves and SHELVES of books about working in an office in London.

[cassiopaya.livejournal.com]

BEST BRIT COMMERCIAL EVAR!

[lareinenoire.livejournal.com]

Oh, academics. Why do you give us such a bad name?

If I've ever acted like that, I am so sorry and I didn't mean to be horrible and pretentious!

In fact, in my opinion, if you’ve had to drag “I’ve got xxxx degrees in xxx” into any discussion, then you’ve already lost it.

Yes. That is completely true. Anyone who has to fall back on the name of their degree has clearly failed to demonstrate why they have that degree.

I am not a historian; in fact, much of my research is devoted to how a lot of historians are misreading texts. But I do know a great deal about a very small area -- fifteenth-century queens and sixteenth-century historiography. And, yes, I snark at Philippa Gregory on my LJ. All the time because she deserves it. But I don't expect any sort of special treatment for it, certainly.

[seraphim-grace.livejournal.com]

i have 2 degrees including one in creative writing (my masters is in formative literature - writing - what this means I know where to put a semi colon)
and my answer to this nyuh!
first of all the write what you have experienced - sod that, know what you write
history is written by the victors and send those annoying little sods a copy of a philippa gregory, that should break their brains
and ever read Dune
Dune is a great argument for this because you're with them all through the action but each chapter is preceded by a note from a historian writing either just after (princess irulan) or long after and it doesn't make sense until the very last line when paul is forced to marry irulan for the empire and jessica says to his lover "but history will call us wives" and you're like no it won't Irulan is writing it, history won't mention you at all....
history is written by the victors, it's unreliable, propagandist and mostly made up to suit the news of the time (part of my degree was in history) and even then it's all this is probably/maybe/we assume...

I keep thinking if you got a photograph of Caesar scribbling scribbling Caesar was here verified by fifteen different witnesses all swearing affidavits that caesar was there found in a book about how caesar was there
modern historians would put "we can therefore speculate that it is possible that maybe caesar might have been in the area"

[antychan.livejournal.com]

Please bear wth my broken keyboard:

Hey, hae a cum laude degree n hstory and know next to nothng about the subject because just don't care beyond "uhhh, shny hstorcal settng; somebody who s not me wll hae to make sure the facts are correct" and hae forgotten all about t. xD

That sad, the Ttnc broke nto three peces, not two. Can you see people askng James Cameron to change hs moe?

Also, ery wse quote: C"rtcs are lke eunuchs. They know how to do somethng but they're unable to." t's one thng to be a hstory buff wth tons of knowledge and degrees who's paned by bad research. thnk the author needs to make sure the facts are as close to what s consdered academcally correst as possble. But eletng your hstoran self by ntpckng apart the create works of others just shows you don't understand what art s about.

[zoepaleologa.livejournal.com]

As a living* piss artist I have the following to say:

they were not only a historian – BUT A LIVING HISTORIAN. (as opposed to what, I really don’t know

Flesh eating zombie historian. They're the worst.

*As opposed to pickled in Valpolicella...

I did a degree that mostly specialised in history, and luckily in the history I'm still most interested. I never thought when applying for the course that I'd use it to chart a notorious homosexual relationship in the sixteenth century...

The thing is, I'm not sure that the skills required for writing historical fiction and hard historical research are the same, though skill at one certainly can grease the skids for the other - the novelist's ability to make two plus two facts equal a fifth salacious one is useful in researching a time and place where primary sources are either hagiographical or scant or both. Equally, a hardnose ability to sift fact and discard propaganda is good for the writer to have so they can reject the more received ideas.

But back to the question that started it - I think the able writer can pick and choose between theories - old and new, provided they present believable character and motivation. The joy of novelist is being partisan; the historian needs to balance the evidence and not hack off rival historians!

[crawling-angel.livejournal.com]

BUT A LIVING HISTORIAN. (as opposed to what, I really don’t know.)

A dead one? Hey! My bag!

[kittymay.livejournal.com]

Well, as a (living) historian...I er...um...well, I dunno. I wasn't paying attention to that lecture....