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Balancing Artful Storytelling and Historical Interpretation

Seeing The Story in History

“Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of art,” Susan Sontag wrote in her 1964 work, Against Interpretation and Other Essays. “Our task is to cut back content so that we can see the thing at all.”

Maria Popova, the brilliant writer behind The Marginalian, explored Sontag’s line of thought regarding art and content, criticism and interpretation. Popova’s examination and Sontag’s words prompted thoughts about how I’m researching and writing about history. Bear with me as I follow Popova and Sontag, leading to thoughts about my work on Barons, Brewers, and Bootleggers: A Social History of Beer in Missouri.

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Now Available: The New Territory, Issue 16

The New Territory issue 16

Order the latest issue #16 of The New Territory or better yet, sign up for a subscription! This issue contains my Literary Landscapes essay about Miriam Davis Colt and the Vegetarian Settlement Company. The failed settlement of Octagon City once existed in Allen County, Kansas. Based on Colt’s travels and my own immigrant mother’s journey, I reflected on what we choose to carry and what to leave behind.

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Summer Book Research in the Ozarks and Springfield

Pete Dulin Brian and Joleen Durham Piney River Brewing

Summer book research in the Ozarks and Springfield invested life into the long quiet hours of writing a book once I returned home. Don’t get me wrong. I love being a research nerd, poking my nose into city records, biographical accounts, and newspaper articles more than a century old. Diving into the past shifts my perspective when I consider the present. Then and now, I observe how human nature resurrects its best aspirations and worst impulses.

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