Writing those two last posts made a big difference in how I'm working with my manuscript. The very act of writing about my problems for an audience helped me to articulate them far more clearly than I was articulating them to myself, even in my writing journal. I've written quite a lot in the past couple of days, and it is text that I feel much more confident about, in a voice that I think will work. The idea that someone (anyone!) is reading my ideas and my prose kept me honest, in a way.
There is an article in this week's "Week in Review" in The New York Times about a reporter (Brian Stelter) who has lost almost 75 lbs by tweeting about it. At first, his goal was 25 lbs in 25 weeks, and then he went for another 25 when he reached it, and another 25 after that (he says he'll get to 75 on September 3 -- the day the original 25 weeks was up). He writes that he wanted an "audience cheering him on." Eventually, his audience was comprised of 600 people -- most of whom he had not known before. He described one such woman as his "biggest fan," and when he finally did speak to her as he prepared the article, it came out that she had also lost 50 lbs. His success IS inspiring.
He also wanted the fact of having to make his every bite public to help keep him honest. "Eat and tweet." It's embarrassing to have to admit to an audience that you just ate three jelly doughnuts and a milkshake, so you don't do eat them. He found that it didn't quite work that way all the time (and he wasn't always honest) -- but 'fessing up to his transgressions made him less likely to transgress again (how very Catholic!). The pressure of the crowd...
I was especially interested in this article because I, too, have been trying to (and succeeding at) losing weight these past few months. I'm truly terrible about remembering my own weight and I can't remember where I started, but I think I've lost about 25 lbs -- I've had to buy clothing several sizes smaller. There's nothing like a scary visit with your cardiologist to make you mend your ways! I haven't done it by tweeting about it, but my method, such as it is, also involves being honest. I began using an iPhone app (MyCal Calorie and Nutrition Tracker, $.99) to track my daily food intake back in late April. I eventually switched to an iPad app called Calorie Counter for FatSecret (free!), but the principle is the same: you enter what you ate into the app, and it keeps track of the calories, fat content, fiber, sodium for you. In order to know how much you've eaten, you have to measure or weigh pretty much everything. No one but me reads my "food diary," but I have been quite honest about what goes in there, though to be really honest, I have to admit that I didn't keep track on nights when I went out in Barcelona, or when I've been at a potluck full of yummy food, or when I've invited people over for dinner... It would be difficult to do so, given that I don't often don't know what went into the food, but I also know that I surely ended up above my self-imposed limit and I just don't want to go there too spectacularly. The "plenary sessions" in Barcelona certainly wouldn't have helped!
My success with this method of losing weight is in fact identical to that described on the "Well" blog in The New York Times on July 16, 2010. The app helps me make better choices, because I often enter a meal before I eat it, modifying my overall menu so as to keep on track. The night I eat little more than a big tomato salad (my garden is producing ginormous tomatoes and it's hard to keep up), I can have a (carefully measured portion of) ice cream, for instance. When I've made a scrumptious pasta using olive oil and cheese, I can't. For me, it works. I heard about a woman who claimed this method stopped her from "magical thinking" ("it's only a little cookie and doesn't really count...") and that also sounds on target. YMMV, of course.
So how is all this related to writing and this blog? It's partly about the importance of being honest about your progress, though unlike Brian Stelter, I don't really feel I need the audience for that. When I was in the push to finish my dissertation, I was brutally honest with myself in my writing journal about how many words I had written on any given day. That worked. I won't be writing here about how many words I've written (or tweeting it!), though I think I might try to keep track again, to keep myself honest with myself. But perhaps it's also being honest in a more abstract manner: acknowledging the problems I'm having and trying to write through them. My progress this week seems to indicate that it may have worked. It certainly helped.
I have not written anything else here during that time, of course. And there's the trick: how to blog and write a book at the same time. Writing takes time, and time is limited.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Monday, August 16, 2010
Religious Revelations and the Historian
As I wrote about earlier, I have also been trying to write about the series of events that led Limoux to his revelations and the revelations themselves. Briefly, he tried to fast for forty days and forty nights like Jesus, but had to give up after ten days. On his return (and after eating), he had a revelation which he declared was the source of all his beliefs (God had "placed it in his heart"). Once again, the text is laconic, but there are many things "around" the text that can be ascertained with a high degree of certainty. On-site research (amusingly conducted among the old men and hunters at the Pouss'Café in Saint-Paul-de-Fenouillet) has allowed me to identify the cave in which he fasted, for instance. Thanks to the Medieval Calendar Calculator, I can figure out when Ash Wednesday was that year and thus make an educated guess about the weather (keeping in mind the Julian/Gregorian problem, of course). Though the town itself has changed, the area near the cave is undeveloped. If I wanted to, I could retrace Limoux's steps from his cave back to town. It is possible to research the effects of prolonged fasting on the human body (and also on the human mind). But how does one tell the story of a religious revelation?
There are models, of course. Caroline Walker Bynum, for instance. Barbara Newman and Richard Kieckhefer. There are many others. I need to go back and reread their work and think about it. In the case of Limoux, I believe that the "revelations" he received were part of an actual psychiatric condition, and are composed at least in part of fragments of things he had known or seen before. The content of the revelation is the stuff of his deposition and much of my work so far has been in teasing out the threads of his thought. That part is easy (well...). But at the center of all of this, and its drama, is the moment of revelation itself. How to write about what I think could be characterized as a psychotic break? I can't get inside his head, of course, but I have the gist of what he told the bishop, and it's juicy stuff. And the rationality (of his irrationality) is in that moment of revelation.
Now this is putting me in an awkward situation. I have always told my students, for instance, that it is not productive to ask if Joan of Arc was schizophrenic. I have bristled at scholars who have dismissed my beloved Na Prous Boneta as psychotic. So why am I arguing for thinking about Limoux's revelations as psychotic delusions and/or hallucinations? My rationale, I think, is that I am not dismissing Limoux, but instead using the content of his delusions to understand him, his past, and the world around him. Nor do I wish to dismiss the genuinely religious character of his revelations (though he himself actually describes them as intellectual and philosophical). He believed these things passionately enough to go to the stake rather than deny them.
There are models, of course. Caroline Walker Bynum, for instance. Barbara Newman and Richard Kieckhefer. There are many others. I need to go back and reread their work and think about it. In the case of Limoux, I believe that the "revelations" he received were part of an actual psychiatric condition, and are composed at least in part of fragments of things he had known or seen before. The content of the revelation is the stuff of his deposition and much of my work so far has been in teasing out the threads of his thought. That part is easy (well...). But at the center of all of this, and its drama, is the moment of revelation itself. How to write about what I think could be characterized as a psychotic break? I can't get inside his head, of course, but I have the gist of what he told the bishop, and it's juicy stuff. And the rationality (of his irrationality) is in that moment of revelation.
Now this is putting me in an awkward situation. I have always told my students, for instance, that it is not productive to ask if Joan of Arc was schizophrenic. I have bristled at scholars who have dismissed my beloved Na Prous Boneta as psychotic. So why am I arguing for thinking about Limoux's revelations as psychotic delusions and/or hallucinations? My rationale, I think, is that I am not dismissing Limoux, but instead using the content of his delusions to understand him, his past, and the world around him. Nor do I wish to dismiss the genuinely religious character of his revelations (though he himself actually describes them as intellectual and philosophical). He believed these things passionately enough to go to the stake rather than deny them.
I've always been intrigued by the idea that Hildegard of Bingen suffered from migraines. I first encountered this in Oliver Sack's The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, but eventually I tracked down some other studies that make the claim. This migraine aura site summarizes some of the debate. I think the evidence, mostly from the paintings, is pretty compelling -- but I don't think that suggesting this "takes away" from Hildegard's originality or genuine spirituality. Limoux is similar. His mind may have cracked and lost touch with reality, but it is what his mind made of that that interests me.
I am reminded of something a student said once. When I asked what the class thought of the deposition of Na Prous Boneta (who claims to have given birth to the Holy Spirit, among other things), this student said "I believe her." The rest of the class turned to her in astonishment, and then she clarified: "I believe that she believed what she told them." And with that I heartily agreed: she believed what she told them. What do I think of Limoux? I believe him. "Diagnosing" him does nothing for him, but I think it could be productive for me, as the writer telling his story. Just as I can better tell the story of Limoux's cave by finding it and knowing things about its distance from the town and its surroundings, I think learning about other psychotic breaks can help me to describe what happened to him. That's why I was asking for books about psychotic breaks the other day on Facebook (I'm still looking, btw).
I don't think I'm being hypocritical -- am I?
Article on Hildegard and the migraine theory:
Podoll K, Robinson D. The migrainous nature of the visions of Hildegard of Bingen. Neurol Psychiat Brain Res 2002; 10: 95-100.
Don't Make Stuff Up
Dear Reader, I am resurrecting this blog because writing is a lonely business, and I think the issues I am struggling with right now deserve a conversation. I hope you will engage in that conversation with me. 
She's right, of course. I'm a historian and I can't just make stuff up. Historians muster evidence (from documents, usually) and carefully show how that evidence supports their conclusions. If we made up our evidence, we would be violating the implicit contract we make with our readers who trust us to draw reasonable conclusions from texts and sources that actually exist. Making sh*t up is contrary to the standards of professional conduct for historians. Period.
As Monika Otter correctly noted, however, I was asking about history and fiction in a different way. I'm writing about a man (Limoux) known through only a single source, an inquisitorial deposition of about 3,000 words (in Latin). And I'm writing a whole book! I thought at first it was going to be an article, but it just kept expanding. This is one of the richest sources I have ever worked on, and it sends tentacles out in all kinds of directions, most of them fascinating. Those of you who have spoken with me about Limoux know that I refer to him frequently as "urine dude" - and that's only one direction. I now know a lot about urine, just to name only one of the strange topics I have recently been researching. Limoux has always reminded me of Menocchio...
So I've been reading around, thinking about this problem. David Hackett Fischer spoke at Middlebury a couple of years ago and made a case for historians to be better writers (well, that's not exactly what he said, but sort of...). He himself is a wonderfully vivid and compelling writer, whose Paul Revere's Ride, for instance, is a riveting, minute by minute, field by field history of that famous night. I loved the book from the minute my brother Robert loaned it to me -- in part because I grew up only a couple of miles from the meadow where the man himself was captured and thus knew the places Fischer was writing about, and in part because it was simply a very good read. It is full of detail (p. 107):
The medievalist, of course, has an even more intractable problem in writing like this. I don't have and will never have the range of primary source material that Fischer does. His deposition is all I have about him personally. I have a great deal more "around" him, you might say. I have been trying to write about two "scenes" this week: the first is the series of events that led Limoux to his revelations, and the second is the narrative of his interrogation. I'll write about the problems of the revelations in another post.
I'm struggling a lot with finding the narrative voice that will allow me to do this effectively. I am interested in exploring models besides David Hackett Fischer for how to write vivid, historically responsible prose. They don't have to be medieval. Suggestions are welcome.
--------------------------------------------------------------
"Don't make stuff up." That's what my friend Amanda Seligman advised in a response to my Facebook status update about pondering the line between history and fiction. 
She's right, of course. I'm a historian and I can't just make stuff up. Historians muster evidence (from documents, usually) and carefully show how that evidence supports their conclusions. If we made up our evidence, we would be violating the implicit contract we make with our readers who trust us to draw reasonable conclusions from texts and sources that actually exist. Making sh*t up is contrary to the standards of professional conduct for historians. Period. As Monika Otter correctly noted, however, I was asking about history and fiction in a different way. I'm writing about a man (Limoux) known through only a single source, an inquisitorial deposition of about 3,000 words (in Latin). And I'm writing a whole book! I thought at first it was going to be an article, but it just kept expanding. This is one of the richest sources I have ever worked on, and it sends tentacles out in all kinds of directions, most of them fascinating. Those of you who have spoken with me about Limoux know that I refer to him frequently as "urine dude" - and that's only one direction. I now know a lot about urine, just to name only one of the strange topics I have recently been researching. Limoux has always reminded me of Menocchio...
So I've been reading around, thinking about this problem. David Hackett Fischer spoke at Middlebury a couple of years ago and made a case for historians to be better writers (well, that's not exactly what he said, but sort of...). He himself is a wonderfully vivid and compelling writer, whose Paul Revere's Ride, for instance, is a riveting, minute by minute, field by field history of that famous night. I loved the book from the minute my brother Robert loaned it to me -- in part because I grew up only a couple of miles from the meadow where the man himself was captured and thus knew the places Fischer was writing about, and in part because it was simply a very good read. It is full of detail (p. 107):
Suddenly the mood was shattered. It would have been the horse that noticed first, as horses often do. A rider as experienced as Paul Revere would instantly have seen the animal's head come up, and her ears prick forward, and her high-arched neck twist slightly from side to side as she came alert to danger. He would have felt a momentary break in the rhythm of the canter, a change in the tension of the reins, and a subtle shift of pressure beneath his seat.In the endnotes for this chapter ("The Warning: The Midnight Ride as Collective Effort") Fischer cites diaries, journals, letters, depositions, geneaological research, archival material, surviving artifacts, articles in Sky and Telescope and Astronomy, earlier histories both broad in scope (William Gordon, History of the Independence of the United States, 4 vols., London, 1788) and pointed (William W. Wheildon, History of Paul Revere's Signal Lanterns, Boston, 1878), as well as simple common sense ("It would have been dangerous to light the lanterns on the ground floor of the church, with British soldiers passing in the street, and impossible to light them at the top of a narrow ladder"). There is a lot of material out there about the night of April 18-19, 1775... The unusual moonshadow that evening is documentable astronomically. We know what the Regulars would have been wearing. We know how a good horse behaves (and we know that Deacon Larkin's horse Brown Beauty was a seriously good horse). But this passage goes a little further, I think, to good dramatic effect. It's decidely not fiction... but have the dramatization, the conjectures gone too far? The evidence is there, in his endnotes, but he wears his scholarship lightly.
Paul Revere searched the road ahead. Suddenly, he saw two horsemen in the distance, almost invisible, waiting silent and motionless in the moonshadow of a great tree by the edge of the highway. As Revere rode closer, he made out the blur of military cockades on their hats, and the bulge of heavy holsters at their hips.
Regulars!
He pulled sharply on his reins, and Deacon Larkin's horse responded instantly....
The medievalist, of course, has an even more intractable problem in writing like this. I don't have and will never have the range of primary source material that Fischer does. His deposition is all I have about him personally. I have a great deal more "around" him, you might say. I have been trying to write about two "scenes" this week: the first is the series of events that led Limoux to his revelations, and the second is the narrative of his interrogation. I'll write about the problems of the revelations in another post.
He was taken and questioned about this sacrament, and refusing to respond, and turning himself to other words, and stories, at first he was dismissed to go, having been called to appear and to swear on the Holy Gospel of God about these first things, and also about other serious things, he was again denounced and captured.This laconic text reveals that that at first his interrogators thought he was crazy and dismissed him, before calling him back after he was denounced again. I know inquisitorial procedure and I know the name of the bishop before whom he appeared. I have been to the tiny town (Alet-les-Bains) where the newly-formed diocese was based and know that the "cathedral" was really an abbey church. I can tell the story. But how can I describe the extraordinary impression he must have made without veering too far into conjecture, getting too close to fiction? I could turn it into a novel, if I were gifted that way. But I am a historian, not a novelist, and I want to be historically and archivally responsible, without boring the reader. Inquisitorial depositions were not written down in order to make good stories, and I know it is my job to squeeze them for every last drop of juice, to unpack them as fully as they can be unpacked.
I'm struggling a lot with finding the narrative voice that will allow me to do this effectively. I am interested in exploring models besides David Hackett Fischer for how to write vivid, historically responsible prose. They don't have to be medieval. Suggestions are welcome.
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