Reading History

Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending and Niall Ferguson's Civilization both shared my bed the last months. (Since I was very young I have developed one of those habits where i really cannot fall asleep without reading, as a result my nightstand is a heap of books and magazines to the agony of my fiance who just finds it a bit of a mess and doesn't understand this need to read) Two very different books, the first a work of fiction and winner of the Man Booker Prize, the other a work of non-fiction. But both with some common red thread - history.

Ferguson's Civilization is a historic account of how the "West" ended up being the dominant civilization and questions are raised on whether this will remain the case. The combinations of competition, property rights, medicine, consumer society and work ethic are cited as the catalysts for growth and growth in power. What I really enjoyed about this book was the light it shone on the non-western civilizations - their power, strength and demise. Not only did I enjoy reading about history in China, Middle East, Japan, South America ... (history that really isn't part of the high school curriculum in Belgium, at least not 10 years ago) , it also points out how once dominant civilizations can crumble when bad decisions are made,  and that the equilibrium of power is in that sense a very fragile and sensitive one. 

Barnes's The Sense of an Ending is really one of those books that just engulfed me. Where Civilization took me 3 months to read its 325 pages, The Sense of an Ending just took me two days to read its 150 pages. Of course, very different types of books - Civilization for me was a book that I could more easily put down in the evening - requiring more concentration when you read it, it made me more tired and was hence ideal as a kind of lullaby putting me to sleep - by which i really don't mean that it was boring :), it's just the type of attention that it required. 

The Sense of an Ending drew me in so much that I really wanted to know what was going to happen in the story, and I loved the tone of the narrator in the story and his description of the characters and philosophical notes. 

Tony Webster - the narrator of the story - is a retired man and is recalling events of his youth - the friendships and love affairs he lived through his school and university days - when he is faced with a peculiar letter... What really runs through this story - and what is also the link with history that I want to make here - is that he starts to realize that his memory is imperfect. Not only did he interpret certain events from his own background he also gave them meaning based on his current state of mind, without considering that he did not even have all the facts to come to a 'correct' conclusion...

So is the same with history - which version are you being told? Who interpreted the events? Which facts were taken into considerations and which were knowingly or unknowingly omitted...? I believe that's worth remembering when reading works about history...