History 101

Illuminating the Archives

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I spent the majority of my academic life studying history historiography. As those who’ve read my latest novel about the Nazi Occupation of Poland, The Requisitions, now know (last chance to grab a 1st edition before they sell out), my obsession with the stories we tell ourselves about World War Two began when I was a child and has been a primary curiosity ever since.¹

As a literary tour guide in Paris, I focus on the stories behind the placards, investigating the histories that the French state isn’t as keen to tell, specifically regarding the Nazi Occupation of Paris. And, invariably, whenever I discuss the many years I spent studying bigotry, human cruelty, and violence, at some point, a client asks,  “What’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned about it all?”

My answer is deceptively simple: what surprises me most is that we’re still surprised by it all. The history of humanity is beautiful and cruel. Or, as Mary Shelley wrote 198 years ago,

“Such is human nature, that beauty and deformity are often closely linked. In reading history we are chiefly struck by the generosity and self-devotion that follow close on the heels of crime, veiling with supernal flowers the stain of blood.”

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Here’s an excerpt from a chapter in The Requisitions entitled “Civilization”:

The year is 2023 and the world is unraveling again. If we’ve learned anything as a species, it’s how quickly we forget. Elvis Presley said animals don’t hate and that we’re supposed to be better than them, but if this were true, the history of fascist regimes wouldn’t be so closely linked to the history of democratic elections.

In 2024, approximately two billion people from 64 countries (plus the European Union) will participate in some of the most consequential elections in recent memory. While yes, it’s easy to feel disheartened impotent in the face of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the complicated (and permanent) conflict in Palestine, the threat of demagogues across the world, and the ever-present reality of climate catastrophe, I’ve always preferred to peer into the abyss in an attempt to illuminate the darkness, rather than pretend it’s all going to be okay by simply ignoring reality.

Scoffing at, ignoring, or otherwise dismissing the most complex questions of our epoch is a surefire way to guarantee that those who wield power will continue to get away with it. This isn’t surprising, but it’s worth pointing out: the most commonly accepted historical narratives aren’t those that represent Truth, but rather those that narrativize the past in a way that provides meaning and comfort for a given epoch.

But a cookie-cutter version of existence can only ever be half-baked. Yes, it’s easier to act surprised and pretend that we haven’t seen this all before, but the oscillation between progress human decency and human cruelty catastrophe never ceases; we’ve become far too complacent in our pleasure cubes, imaging the pendulum only ever swings in one direction.

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The point here is that the past archives can shed just as much light on who we are (and where we’re headed) as any “new content” that comes with “staying informed” about contemporary politics. What if, instead of crocodile tears and endless virtue signaling on social media, we spent some time studying the complex narratives that led to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Israeli/Palestine conflict, and even China’s defiance of the USA’s cultural desire to hold dominion over the entire world?

In the words of the essayist Jean Améry in his masterful book At the Mind’s Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities (original German text 1966; English translation 1980)

“For nothing is resolved, no conflict settled, no remembering has become a mere memory. What happened, happened. But that it happened cannot be so easily accepted. I rebel: against my past, against history and against a present that places the incomprehensible in the cold storage of history and thus falsifies it in a revolting way.”

In an era when knee-jerk reactions to extremely complicated international conflicts and sweeping character judgments of entire political parties somehow constitute intellectual discourse, I, too, rebel—against being surprised, against any narrative that pits “us” versus “them,” and especially against virtue signaling that ignores the basic human fact that every side in the history of human conflicts has believed it was on the right side of history.

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This is why, over the next few months, I’ll be using this space to re-work, re-think, and re-publish essays, excerpts, and thoughts from my own “cold storage of history,” ranging from my years in the Holocaust Studies Department at the University of Vermont (BA) to studying my studies of the psychology of genocide at University College London (MA) and finally my studies of historiography and metafiction at Vermont College of Arts (MFA).

To begin with, I’ll be covering the following subjects with multiple posts devoted to each subject:

• April 2024: An introduction to the rise of fascism in Italy: it’s hard to make sense of the popularity of fascism without understanding its origins in Italy, especially regarding The Doctrine of Fascism, an essay written by Benito Mussolini and the Italian philosopher Giovanni Gentile

• May 2024: An overview of the three primary social theories that have taught me more about human behavior than any amount of news media ever has: Sigmund Freud’s “pleasure principle” and the love/death drives; Alfred Adler’s “will to power” and the inferiority complex; and Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy and the “will to meaning”

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We’ll see where we go from there. Future subjects will almost surely include Nazism and the Occupation of Paris, as well as the entirely-too-academic term historiographic metafiction, a fascinating genre of literature that has taught me more about storytelling than any television show or movie.

Despite the challenges our world faces in 2024 (a year that neatly fits into a Christian narrative of the last two thousand years), I still believe in the better angels of our nature, in illumination versus obscurantism.

The most incomprehensible aspects of our nature only remain incomprehensible if we refuse to make sense of them. As the historian Christopher Browning wrote in Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, “to explain is not to excuse and to understand is not to forgive,” which is why it remains critical that we delve into the darkness archives in search of illumination so that we might locate the light that still glows within.

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Appendix – the if not, Paris Archive

I’ve always tended to view this Substack as a testing ground for vulnerability. if not, Paris (a name inspired by Anne Carson’s translation of Sappho) began in early 2022 with the serialization of a love story, a story I'm now keeping closely guarded as I revise, rewrite, and rework it into a full-length book with my wife, the photographer (and ingenious editor) Augusta Sagnelli.

At other times in this space, I've focused on writing fiction, including the early chapters of an unfinished serialized novella about debauched life in Paris and a story about a young American woman forced to traverse the entire country to retain control over her body.

My Substack archives, which go behind a paywall after a year, also include dozens of essays, including an attempt to understand how I got to where I am as a novelist, to my recent thoughts on the Great Substack Nazi Debate, because yes, to this day, “I, Too, Have a ‘Nazi Problem.’”

I’ve also exchanged letters (and conducted interviews) with fellow Substack writers. Most recently, I’ve shared a few excerpts from the limited release of my second published novel, The Requisitions, which Augusta and I published independently via our micro-press, Kingdom Anywhere (as of the first day of spring, 90 out of 300 first-edition copies remain, so consider this a final opportunity to grab a copy before I save the rest for walking tour clients in the busy season).

Finally, when I’ve been allergic to writing longer pieces on this space (see: finishing The Requisitions), I’ve used if not, Paris as an escape from regimented thinking to share my most vulnerable work, including a poem + a drawing about the “Little Red Hearts” that we’re told to obsess over when “building a following” (where is anyone leading, I always wonder?) to composing various films and songs (piano/vocals), because sometimes words lose all meaning, and only melodies and harmonies suffice.

That’s about the long and short of it. I’ve published 119 pieces during my two years on Substack, and while I don’t expect you to delve deep into the archive, just because something isn’t new exists in the past doesn’t mean it isn’t worth considering.

1. The wise and curious

Matthew Long

gifted me with a very kind review and interview if you fancy learning more:

Someday, you might want to remember...