pt

I’ve been thinking a lot about how writing about a historical topic is sort of like if you lived in a city like New York or Chicago, and some of your friends were coming to town and you had only a short time to help them experience the city. You’d have to figure out what they *expect* to see because it’s the standard tourist stuff (Sears Tower, Navy Pier, Michigan Ave, e.g.) but also weigh that against stuff that they may not even know existed, but would appreciate: the place with the best ice cream, the funky neighborhood street festival. If you’re clever and efficient, you can find a way to layer in the iconic Chicago with the less well-known, so that they feel like they didn’t get cheated out of the big-name sights, but that they didn’t just get the generic city tour.

Except when it comes to writing, planning the itinerary takes about three years, and then you have to defend it.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 18th, 2007 at 6:19 pm and is filed under history, metaphors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.