Chapter 1

¹ Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 1.

² Ibid., p. 6.

³ See http://www-english.tamu.edu/pers/fac/myers/novick_debate.html

⁴ William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun (New York: Random House, 1951), p. 92.

⁵ Carl G. Gustavson, A Preface to History (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1955), p.16.

⁶ Harry Elmer Barnes, A History of Historical Writing (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1938), p. 370.

⁷ John Tosh, The Pursuit of History: Aims, Methods and New Directions in the Study of Modern History (London: Longman, 1991), p. 31.

⁸ Ibid., pp. 37-38.

⁹ Ibid., p. 39.

¹⁰ Ibid., p. 34.

¹¹ Bernard Shaw, The Doctor's Dilemma: A Tragedy (London: Penguin, 1946), pp.167-168.

¹² H. L. Mencken, Minority Report: H. L. Mencken's Notebooks (New York: Knopf,

¹³ See http://poynter.org/dg.lts/id.45/aid.82799/column.htm

¹⁴ Barnes, op.cit., p. 370.

¹⁵ Tosh, op.cit., pp. 33, 65-66.

¹⁶ Ibid., pp. 136-137.

¹⁷ Barnes, op.cit., p. 267.

¹⁸ Ibid., p. 241.

¹⁹ Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), p. 123.

²⁰ Novick, op.cit., pp. 44-45.

²¹ Ibid., p. 45.

²² Peter Charles Hoffer, Past Imperfect: Facts, Fictions, Fraud—American History from Bancroft and Parkman to Ambrose, Bellesisles, Ellis, and Goodwin (New York: Public Affairs, 2004), pp. 18-19.

²³ Ibid., p. 19.

²⁴ Ibid., pp. 21-22.

²⁵ Claire Sprague, Edgar Saltus (New York: Twayne, 1968), p. 72.

²⁶ James Hurt, "Sandburg's Lincoln Within History." Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association. Vol. 20, No. i (Winter 1999), p. 55.

²⁷ Tosh, op.cit., pp. 23-24.

²⁸ See Douglas Martin, "Shelby Foote, Historian and Novelist, Dies at 88." The New York Times 29 June 2005. Online at http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/29/ books/29foote.html?pagewanted=all

²⁹ White, op.cit., p. 122.

³⁰ Ibid., pp. 83-84.

³¹ Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), pp. ix-x.

³² Ibid., p. 4.

³³ Ibid., p. 24.

³⁴ Hayden White, Figural Realism: Studies in the Mimesis Effect (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), p. 9.

³⁵ The last of my three examples of metaphor is attributed to the French poet, novelist, and playwright Philippe Auguste Mathias de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam (1838-1889). The second example is taken from the title of a hit popular song of 1972, written and performed by the rhythm and blues band War.

³⁶ Sartre published works of technical philosophy (Being and Nothingness), novels (Nausea), and plays (No Exit). Rand did the same (Introduction to Objectivist Epis-temology, Atlas Shrugged, The Night of January 16^th). Gass's case is a bit different. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Cornell and calls his meeting with Ludwig Wittgenstein there in the 1950s "the most important intellectual experience of my life." (Fiction and the Figures of Life, p. 248) He earned his living as a philosophy professor for nearly fifty years, first at Purdue, latterly at Washington University in St. Louis, from which he retired in 2001. His publications have all been literary in character, including novels (Omensetter's Luck), short stories (In the Heart of the Heart of the Country), belles lettres (On Being Blue), and literary criticism (Fiction and the Figures of Life).

³⁷ William H. Gass, Fiction and the Figures of Life (New York: Knopf, 1970), pp. 3, 5.

³⁸ Ibid., pp. 7-9.

³⁹ Ibid., p. 60.

⁴⁰ Ibid., pp. 10-11.

⁴¹ Ayn Rand, The Romantic Manifesto: A Philosophy of Literature (New York: World, 1969), pp. 79, 50, 28.

⁴² Ibid., p. 23.

⁴³ Ibid., pp. 31-32.

⁴⁴ Ibid., pp. 34-35.

⁴⁵ Ibid., p. 46.

⁴⁶ Ibid., pp. 43-44.

⁴⁷ Ibid., p. 22.

⁴⁸ Ibid., p. 55.

⁴⁹ Jean Paul Sartre, Literature and Existentialism (New York: Citadel, 1962), p. 32.

⁵⁰ Ibid., p. 39.

⁵¹ Ibid., pp. 63, 40.

⁵² See his review of Peter Watson's Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud in the New Statesman for 28 May 2005. Online at http://www.newstatesman.com/ Bookshop/300000098646

⁵³ Roy A. Childs, Jr., "Big Business and the Rise of American Statism," in Liberty Against Power: Essays by Roy A. Childs, Jr., ed. Joan Kennedy Taylor (San Francisco: Fox & Wilkes, 1994), p. 18.

⁵⁴ Tosh, op.cit., p. 141.

⁵⁵ Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. Third Revised Edition. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1963), p. 49.

⁵⁶ This phrase has long been associated with the American philosopher Nelson Goodman (1906-1998). Anyone interested in Ayn Rand's concept of sense of life would profit from reading Goodman's classic 1960 essay "The Way the World Is," reprinted recently in Peter J. McCormick, ed. Starmaking: Realism, Anti-Realism, and Irrealism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), pp. 3-10.

⁵⁷ John Lewis Gaddis, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 106-107.

⁵⁸ Quoted by Linda M. Orlando in her short essay "Kenneth Roberts: Maine Writer, Historian," 22 April 2003. Online at http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/maine_people/99310

⁵⁹ Quoted by Jack Bales, Roberts's biographer and most notable critic, in "At the Nadir of Discouragement: The Story of Dartmouth's Kenneth Roberts Collection," April 1990. Online at http://www.dartmouth.edu/~library/Library_Bulletin/Apr1990/LB-A90-Bales.html

⁶⁰ Bales, op.cit.

⁶¹ Charles Callan Tansill, Back Door to War: The Roosevelt Foreign Policy, 1933-1941 (Chicago: Regnery, 1952), p. 7.

⁶² Ibid., p. 568.

⁶³ Thomas Fleming, The New Dealers' War: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the War Within World War II (New York: Basic Books, 2001), p. 4.

⁶⁴ Ibid., p. 89 [emphasis added]

⁶⁵ James J. Martin, American Liberalism and World Politics: Liberalism's Press and Spokesmen on the Road Back to War Between Mukden and Pearl Harbor (New York: Devin-Adair, 1964), p. xi.

⁶⁶ Ibid., pp. xii, xv.

⁶⁷ Friedrich A. Hayek, "The Intellectuals and Socialism" in The Intellectuals: A Controversial Portrait, ed. George B. de Huszar (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1960), pp. 371, 380, 372.

⁶⁸ Ibid., p. 371.

⁶⁹ Ibid., pp. 372-373.

⁷⁰ Ibid., pp. 376, 374

⁷¹ Martin, op.cit., pp. 1032-1033.

⁷² See Daniel Aaron and Townsend Ludington, "Chronology," in John Dos Passos, U.S.A. (New York: Library of America, 1996), p. 1246.

⁷³ Ibid., p. 1247.

⁷⁴ John Dos Passos, The Theme Is Freedom (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1956), p. 1.

⁷⁵ Aaron and Ludington, op.cit., p. 1246.

⁷⁶ Dos Passos, Theme, op.cit., pp. i-2.

⁷⁷ Linda W. Wagner, Dos Passos: Artist as American (Austin, Tx: University of Texas Press, 1979), p. xx.

⁷⁸ Ibid., pp. xviii, xvix.

⁷⁹ Martin, op.cit., p. 503.

⁸⁰ Ibid., p. 939.

⁸¹ John Dos Passos, The Grand Design (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1949), pp. 416-418.

⁸² See John Dos Passos, "Americans Are Losing the Victory in Europe." Life 7 January 1946. Online at http://www.kultursmog.com/Life-Page01.htm

⁸³ Dos Passos, Theme, op.cit., p. 232.

⁸⁴ Ibid., pp. 233-234.

⁸⁵ Aaron and Ludington, op.cit., p. 1255.

⁸⁶ Wagner, op.cit., p. xxi.

⁸⁷ Gore Vidal, "At Home in Washington, D.C." in At Home: Essays, 1982-1988 (New York: Random House, 1988), p. 6.

⁸⁸ See "Making the Bestseller List," Online at http://www.lib.virginia.edu/small/ex-hibits/rave_reviews/list_making.html

⁸⁹ Fred Kaplan, Gore Vidal: A Biography (New York: Doubleday, 1999), pp. 686-687.

⁹⁰ Ibid., pp. 738, 740.