Michael's reading reaction

I found that Voice and Vision helped clarify what I am aspiring to as I begin writing my history thesis. While I always wanted to conduct serious scholarship, and I believe I have done so thus far, I also wanted my writing to be delightful - in short, I hope that my love and curiosity for this subject could be infectious through my writing. This may be an ambitious goal, but Pyne gave voice to that desire, and helped me reflect on how to get there.

Early in the text, Pyne identifies a genus of book which he calls “Academic trade.” In Pyne’s words, this is a book “that is based on solid scholarship and that aspire to reach beyond an ever-narrowing circle of specialists - a book that, quantum-like, hovers between two states, something that might appeal to both university presses and to trade publishers.” Producing such a work, which could be both assigned in courses and book clubs, becomes the end of a series of “arts and crafts” that Pyne details through the text.

Several of these elements were applicable to my project. Perhaps most important for me was Pyne’s discussion of drama. Drama, of course, can prove an immensely powerful tool for any narrative writer, including historians. Indeed, Pyne opens his chapter on the subject by arguing, “Drama is what keeps readers turning pages. The slickest transitioning, the wittiest voice, the most elegant phrasing, will not hold their attention for more than a few sentences. What matters is their urge to know more…” Fortunately for me, my project provides fertile ground for historic drama. Over the course of my thesis, I follow an individual as he makes his way through a profoundly volatile and violent historical moment, all while preserving a set of principles that had the potential to harm him. This setup makes for great dramatic material - as Pyne writes, “This is most easily achieved in narratives that revolve around quarrels or quests, narratives that put people in situations where they conflict, strive, and choose.” Keeping this in mind, one focus in writing my narrative will be to bring out the extent to which my protagonist’s actions represented a conscious, principles, and risky choice.

Pyne’s chapter on character was also helpful for my writing. Character holds importance in all writing - as Pyne states, “few texts of any kind will claim much readership without a central character or a cast of surrogates.” However, this literary element will be especially central to a biographical thesis. For me, then, the question becomes how I can make my character (Fauchet) compelling, and how I can use the drama of his revolutionary career to make a broader argument to the reader. After discussing the role of characters, Pyne goes on to provide a gallery of examples from past writing, classifying the characters by their role in the narrative. While some may not prove to be useful models for my exposition of Fauchet, others are worth looking at. Pyne’s profile of Joan Didion’s book The White Album and Didion’s character James Pike present parallels for my thesis. In Didion’s text, Pyne sees a special type of genre, the “character profile,” a brief biography. For Didion and other writers, the character profile poses a special challenge - writing a sketch that will “contain everything necessary, and cannot afford anything more.” As I work to compact Fauchet’s life and thought into a thesis, this will be the challenge of my own writing as well.