by Tracy Barnett
“How does a Writer put a Drug Trip into Words?,” asked a New York Times editorial in December 2018. The author, Michael Pollan, had a problem. A very real problem. He had decided to write a book about psychedelics. This entailed writing, putting into words, an experience described by addicts and aficionados, alike, as indescribable. “William James,” Pollan mused, “famously wrote that mystical experience — perhaps the closest analogue we have of a psychedelic trip — is “ineffable”: beyond the reach of language.” Pollan realized that he “couldn’t count on a common frame of reference, since not all of my readers would be familiar with the exotic psychic terrain onto which I wanted to take them.”[1] How, then, does one transport a reader on this journey? How is the narrative structured?
This is a problem all too familiar among historians. As writers, we seek to take our readers into the past, into a different culture, and, sometimes, to a different country. But, at the same time, we reckon with the limitations of language and the inevitable problems associated with writing about past in the present. Operating under a different set of constrains and within a different set of cultural and linguistic norms, our historical subjects viewed, described, and thought about the world differently. For example, most of us — whether we care to admit it or not — know exactly what being drunk feels like. Yet, “drunk” meant something far different to men in mid-nineteenth-century America. In 1861, Cyrus F. Jenkins became “intoxicated or gentlemanly tight as the common saying” went. He “felt all over spotted” and “thought it the slackest time.” Running across a captain in camp, a drunken Jenkins, apprehensive of reprimand, held his “breath for fear that . . . [the captain] would ask me some question which I knew that I should be detected for my voice was changed femininely fine.”[2] Now, let’s pause here. “Tight,” “spotted,” and “femininely fine” are not words that I, as a twenty-first century American, would have employed in this situation. But, as a historian, I need to use these historical sources to develop a relevant argument and then convey these sentiments to my readers.
My student writers have it worse still. In HIST 3371: Tudor-Stuart England, readings deviate from standard, modern English—words are littered with an extra “e” or two. Others, enrolled in HIST 3443: Spain in the Age of Cervantes, contend with Spanish translations from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The language, and its meaning, is hard enough to grasp as is. But, we want more still. We expect student writers to grasp the meaning of historical texts, develop an original argument, and, then, write a grammatically correct, well-reasoned, analytical paper. Which, now, bring us back to the initial problem: “How does a Writer put a Drug Trip into Words?” or, in our case, ‘How Does a Student Writer put the Past into Words?”
So, are we simply tilting at windmills? Are we, with our pens at full tilt, riding headlong into battle against wooden giants, striving to attain the unattainable?
No. Writing — good writing — can be taught. We, as writers, historians, and instructors, can bridge the chasm of language and cultural dissonance and that divides past and present.
In guiding our student writers, we must first help them fashion meaning from the past by assisting them with the often difficult research process. Use our own historical knowledge as a base, we must share resources. We must give student writers the tools to be successful: suggest example essays, propose bibliographies, provide background reading, introduce them to the archive, and offer keyword search tips for using digital databases. Indeed, introduce them to the language of the past.
We must give student writers the tools to be successful.
Only once the sources are gathered and the thesis devised, do we move on to the second point: structure. “History is” not “just one damn thing after another.”[3] Good writing is not just one damn thing after another. Good writing is deliberate writing; authorial choices are made regarding structure, style, and form. Introduce student writers to the laborious process of outlining and writing and revising and revising again. It is, in fact, not easy to write a drug trip. Should there be one authorial persona or multiple personas? How should the reader be orientated? Should the narrative be linear or circular? These are all choices that the writer must make. And, it is our role to encourage student writers to consider these choices. In conferences with students, ask them why they made the authorial choices they made. Why, for example, did you use this narrative structure? Why did you use this source? Why did you use this quote? Why does your argument take this shape? By asking such questions, we can lead students thought the doors of the past, to answers, and to good historical writing.
Author Bio: Tracy L. Barnett is a doctoral student in the Department of History at the University of Georgia. Her primary research interest is the cultural history of the nineteenth-century South and is fascinated by male behavior—especially the bad and unsavory varieties. In Fall 2018, she supported HIST 3371: Tudor-Stuart England (Kirk Willis) and HIST 3443: Spain in the Age of Cervantes (Benjamin Ehlers) as the WIP Writing Coach.
[1] Michael Pollan, “How does a Writer put a Drug Trip into Words?,” New York Times (New York, New York), December 24, 2018.
[2] September 3, 1861, Cyrus F. Jenkins Diary, Jenkins-Bass Collection, Troup County Archives, Troup County, Georgia.
[3] Attribution of this well-known quote varies, one possibility is Arnold J. Toynbee.