Running for Your Life: A Brief History …

When it comes to novel titles, all of them could be prefaced by these three words:

A Brief History of Ulysses

A Brief History of Coming Through Slaughter

A Brief History of Infinite Jest

Marlon James will be known as the writer who inspires this approach to fulfilling the full potential of the novel.

His “A Brief History of Seven Killings” is anything but brief.

Rather in several hundred pages (of small type), James explores the subject – seven killings – in a written “history” that will dazzle you.

This, of course, is in contrast to the “history” that most of us know, boiled down to dates and kings’ and revolutionaries’ mini-bios, with our school-based understanding of our place in the world rooted in this shallow knowledge of clichés and accepted truths, and in the American context, larded with a patriotic jingoism that is designed to short-shift points of view that don’t square with the imperial truths while skewering the as-dictated evil doers.

But “history” is not that. It is a never-ending story that should, by definition, include points of view of not just the conquerors but the conquered.

Neither side deserves a special place, a throne to preside upon the narrative of its choice.

“A Brief History” nods to these reality, gives us an understanding of a time and place that is full and complete of people AND events.

Next: Running for Your Life: A Sixteen Miler?




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