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Article: After Henry Adams: rewriting history in Joan Didion's Democracy.
- Article from:
- CRITIQUE: Studies in Contemporary Fiction
- Article date:
- January 1, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Heldref Publications. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Historians undertake to arrange sequences--called stories, or histories--assuming in silence a relation of cause and effect. [...] Where he saw sequence, other men saw something quite different, and no one saw the same unit of measure. He cared little about experiments and less about his statesmen, who seemed to him quite as ignorant as himself and, as a rule, no more honest; but he insisted on a relation of sequence, and if he could not reach it by one method, he would try as many methods as science knew. Satisfied that the sequence of men led to nothing and that the sequence of their society led no further, while the mere sequence of time was artificial, and the sequence ...