Volume 54, Number 20 · December 20, 2007
'Ravished by Oranges'
By Simon Leys
Return to Dragon Mountain: Memories of a Late Ming Man
by Jonathan D. Spence
Viking, 332 pp., $24.95
How can we be informed? Chesterton famously observed that when we read in today's newspapers that one window-cleaner fell to his death, our general understanding of window-cleaning is distorted; the information that 35,000 window-cleaners actually did not fall to their deaths would have provided a more balanced view of the matter. Modern historiography has become increasingly aware of this Chestertonian notion. Old-style historians used to focus on kings and great statesmen, on the deeds and words of the famous and the eminent, on wars, victories, and defeats, on crashes, crises, scandals, and miracles; only the most eloquent geniuses had access to the witness box in the court of History; the humble voices of the anonymous masses, the confused rumble of everyday life, were entirely lost to posterity.
Review, 2092 words
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