Saturday, March 10, 2018

"That Project Will Continue, Even in His Absence"

"As for the significance and influence of his work, especially his best-known book, White seems to have had a wry estimate of its importance. Metahistory 'still sells a lot,' he said around the time of its 20th anniversary. But, he added, 'I don't think people really want to read it; it's an intimidatingly long book. It's very tiresome and repetitive. Most people who read it read some of the introduction and maybe read around a bit. But no one reads it through. By the way, I don't think that in order to have an effect, you must produce books that people want to read. It's the project that interests people and not so much a particular way of doing it. I think the gesture of the project is toward innovation and changing the way we think about history.'"

Scott McLemee at Inside Higher Ed discusses the career of historian Hayden White.

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