A short story is the ultimate close-up magic trick -- a couple of thousand words to take you around the universe or break your heart.
Neil GaimanRead
The important thing to understand about American history, wrote Mr. Ibis, in his leather-bound journal, is that it is fictional, a charcoal-sketched simplicity for the children, or the easily bored.
Interpretation
American history often presents a simplified and fictionalized narrative that caters to the needs of its audience.
In this quote, Neil Gaiman, through the character of Mr. Ibis, suggests that American history is portrayed in a way that simplifies complex events into narratives suitable for children or those who seek entertainment rather than depth. This fictionalization reflects a tendency to make history more palatable and engaging, often at the cost of its true intricacies and nuances.
In practice
In a classroom discussion about the portrayal of historical events in textbooks.
A short story is the ultimate close-up magic trick -- a couple of thousand words to take you around the universe or break your heart.
Jesus. Low-Key Lyesmith," said Shadow. and then he heard what he was saying and he understood. "Loki," he said. "Loki Lie-smith." "You're slow," said Loki, "but you get there in the end." And his lips twisted into a scarred smile and the embers danced in the shadows of his eyes.
As a teenager I wrote to R.A. Lafferty. And he responded, too, with letters that were like R.A. Lafferty short stories, filled with elliptical answers to straight questions and simple answers to complicated ones.
Nothing’s changed. You’ll go home. You’ll be bored. You’ll be ignored. No one will listen to you, really listen to you. You’re too clever and too quiet for them to understand. They don’t even get your name right.
I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here, I can pretend...I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than moments. Gods come, and gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds don't last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pretend.
Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.
History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.
History consists of a corpus ascertained facts. The facts are available to the historian in documents, inscriptions and so on, like fish in the fishmonger's slab. The historian collects them, takes them home, and cooks and serves them in whatever style appeals to him.
The tide of history only advances when people make themselves fully visible.
A generation without history is a generation that not only loses a nation's memory but loses a sense of what it's like to be inside a human skin.
No book about Soviet sacrifice was as strong as the women's stories I heard as a child.
There's a big mistake that people make with history, which is to think that people in the past were just like us, but wearing crinolines. They lived in different worlds.
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