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Debunking ...

Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds looks at David Hackett Fisher's new book, Washington's Crossing. Reynolds directs attention to Fisher's discussion of the history and historicity of Emanuel Leutze's painting of Washington crossing the Delaware. "Fischer then looks at the many ‘debunkers' of the painting," says Reynolds, "and observes that while they were sometimes (though not always) right about the details they debunked, ‘they rarely asked about the accuracy of its major themes.'"

Fischer has long been one of the most provocative of American historians, though he is also difficult to locate intellectually because his work is rarely placable within some current paradigm. At a time when there is much discussion of flaws in the writing of American history, particularly, his observation points to an important question about "debunking." When does the exposing of discrete flaws in a work amount to mere nitpicking? When does it merely distract our attention from larger truths to which the work points?

Posted on Saturday, April 17, 2004 at 5:37 PM | Comments (3) | Return

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