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Donato is Currently Reading

Donato is currently reading

Sodome et Gomorrhe (À la recherche du temps perdu #4)

by Marcel Proust

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Sep 15, 2026 10:29PM

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Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century

by Richard Taruskin

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Apr 14, 2026 05:42AM

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L’Esthétique de la résistance (ESTHETIQUE) (French Edition)

by Peter Weiss

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Donato said: " I recently had a revelation that should have been quite obvious, and probably is to everyone else. I've always preferred fiction (literature) to other types of writing because I felt that it was the best way to deal with the same matters that other " I recently had a revelation that should have been quite obvious, and probably is to everyone else. I've always preferred fiction (literature) to other types of writing because I felt that it was the best way to deal with the same matters that other "types" deal with: psychology, philosophy, reality, history, etc. And it does it more elegantly, without the need for so-called facts. The danger with non-fiction is that writers like to spice things up by sprinkling their text with factoids, things that sound good, but are in fact just wrong. A great example of this can be found in the first volume of Richard Taruskin's History of Western Music series. While describing the "legend" of Pope Gregory as the creator of the Gregorian chant, wherein a dove supposedly fed him words through its beak, Taruskin points out how artistic representations include this bird, and that that's where the expression "a little bird told me" comes from (page 6). That's complete pigeon shit, and yet not even The Oxford University Press cared whether it was true when printing it. Why even bring it up? It has nothing to do with music, and it's wrong. Now people will go spreading this silly little story, like messenger pigeons on a mission. In a novel, this little factoid would be fine and perhaps (or perhaps not) add that little spice the author wanted. But in a work of non-fiction, supposedly even scholarly non-fiction? I don't think so.

But no matter, I write not to denigrate non-fiction. In fact, my revelation brings me to do the opposite. As I've started adding non-fiction to the mix, I've come to realize that history is literature (storia = storia (IT), histoire = histoire (FR), etc). There is absolutely no need to set them apart. In fact, we should probably actively merge them. We could even change the word for history to story (or perhaps vice versa)! From now on, I will not distinguish the two. Malaparte's Kaputt is a history book in my eyes. Christopher Clark's The Sleepwalkers is a novel in my eyes: just check out the description of the assassination (I'm sure it, too, has little factoids sprinkled about, but who cares?). The present text is a history book, too.
I present the present text, the present dense text wherein art, nature, history (personal and non), and politics are so intertwined as to be indistinguishable. It's a history of the author, of his family, of his friends, of his ideas, of his struggles, of his country, of his continent, of his time. How is that different from a so-called "history book"? One of the things this book asks is, What's the point of Art? I turn that around, and ask, what's the point of History? ...more "

Apr 14, 2026 06:24AM · see review

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