One semester, long ago, I took American Literature from a visiting professor from Germany. One of my favorite all time books was discovered in this class: Saul Bellow's Henderson the Rain King.
This morning, wanting to brush up on my memory of Henderson the Rain King, I read a few reviews from the New York Times, one of which was the book's first review written in 1959. The review was unkind, which attests to me, the abilities of this German professor who made the book seem like a literary masterpiece--and, that another reader could call the work a literary bomb. How different a book's appeal can be.
The professor had personally met and spent time with the great American writer Saul Bellow while attending an academic conference in Israel. There he was in a country created, in part, because of the events of the Holocaust and my German professor knew nothing of the Holocaust.
He'd grown up in post WWII Germany and the government wanted to erase the Holocaust blight from their history. Imagine the German professor's shame when he knew nothing of his country's atrocities while touring with two Jewish men.
I believed my professor, but it was hard to believe, and later, when a neighbor married a man from Germany, I asked him if it was true. Yes, his parents, in the 1960's had learned nothing of their county's Jewish extermination order and only his generation, attending school in the 1980's was beginning to learn the entire story.
It was the first time I had realized that history could be manipulated. I had previously thought it was a clear cut, black and white report of past events. I didn't know that history could be cut, pasted and rewritten. It was a sobering moment.
While reflecting on my current read, Team of Rivals of Doris Kearns Goodwin, I remembered the German professor's experience and I wondered if children raised in the south, even today, might have been taught a different story about the Civil War. It's been a 150 years, but how deep could the wound be?
I knew the perfect person to ask. A bright young college graduate, a southern boy who likes to respond, "Yes, Ma'am," who was raised in South Carolina. I asked with mild curiosity, seriously doubting if he had been taught differently, but given the Saul Bellow experience in Israel, it was worth asking. And so I did, casually over dinner. And what I heard was shocking. He had indeed been taught Civil War history from a different perspective.
The young man's teachers, his classes, all examined the Civil War events more deeply than this girl raised in the west, in a state that was a territory until late 1864. Foremost, Lincoln was not a hero, and his school viewed the Civil War through the lens of constitutional violations such as the suspension of habeas corpus and the disregard for state's rights. Oh my. Sobering.
That two pivotal events in history could be left out, or taught from different angles makes me wary of my own single minded perceptions concerning historical events.
There are immutable truths that do not vacillate or hinge on the opinions or intentions of men, and my discoveries of conflicting or hidden history help me appreciate the solid ground I do depend on.
What I want to keep in mind is that story, history retold, reinterpreted by witnesses old and new will always have many sides, and it is critical if understanding is sought, to examine and pursue those different sides.
One of my favorite sayings comes from ancient Chinese thought: It's a mighty thin pancake that doesn't have two sides.
And more than likely, there are more than two sides.