A People's History
By Brian Gebhart, Fiction Editor
This summer has been filled with conspiratorial murmurs, from a newly-resurgent political paranoia to the release of Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol, which now rests, unsurprisingly, at the top of the New York Times Bestseller List. I'll let you decide whether this fact is a function of the page-turning plots or further evidence of a cultural low-point. Wherever you come down on this question, it seems clear that Americans have an insatiable appetite for secret societies, hidden symbols, and the reimagining of history as conspiracy. This should be no great surprise when one considers that just over one year ago, we were watching the global economy collapse for reasons that still seem hopelessly opaque. In such an atmosphere, the temptation to read ulterior motives into seemingly innocuous events can be irresistible. If you're drawn to this idea, you can now try your hand at generating the next gripping Robert Langdon plot yourself. Perhaps, in times of crisis and jarring change, people want to ascribe the disruptions in their lives to the mysterious and the occult. Perhaps there's just something in the air. But then, I wouldn't want to sow the seeds of suspicion any further--they're already germinating quite well without my assistance.
In the midst of such overheated speculations and alternate realities, Jim Shepard's arrival on the University of Minnesota campus last week was a welcome respite. Shepard--whose most recent short story collection, Like You'd Understand Anyway, was a finalist for a National Book Award--has gained some well-deserved critical attention for his deft explorations of historical figures. His stories, while often comic in tone and always exhilarating to read, treat their subjects with a seriousness and an empathetic understanding rare in contemporary fiction. The historically-based stories, which often center on unsavory characters--John Ashcroft and Charles-Henri Sanson (executioner during France's Reign of Terror) just to name two examples--adopt these individuals' perspectives with unflinching sincerity and a genuine desire to understand their motives. Shepard demonstrates that one need not venture beyond the tangible world of people, with their insecurities, jealousies, and grievances, to gain a greater understanding of history and its tragedies. But don't just take my word for it. For more insight into Shepard's approach to fiction, make sure to check out the interview with him in the upcoming issue of dislocate.
As one recent report shows, even the financial masters-of-the-universe who presided over last year's collapse were acting based on motives that now seem recognizably, if depressingly, human. Sure, it's fun to speculate about clandestine cabals and to imagine a world in which hidden symbols reveal history's greatest secrets. But as Jim Shepard shows, people are the stuff of which history is made. If we're lucky, his fiction will continue to dazzle readers with the stories of those people, at least until the man behind the curtain is finally revealed.