The History as Fiction in Libra
For the final blog post, I wanted to take a look at the class as a whole and how Libra fits into it. In many ways, Libra feels like the finale to the idea of history as fiction. There’s so much evidence yet so much mystery, so many different interpretations. Libra feels grounded in reality. And yet, it is still undoubtedly fiction. Based on the articles we read in our course packet, my personal understanding of the phrase “history as fiction” is something that best tries to explain the history of the world through a more playful lens that says “maybe this happened, maybe it didn’t”. The other books we have read thus far have been rather focused on this “maybe it happened” aspect of the story. The stories are ridiculous, have made up characters, made up events, and made up histories. Sure, Ragtime uses real characters, but Doctorow makes up personalities and events. And yet, all these things could have happened giv...