Just the facts
It's December 1943, Europe is in flames and Hubert Butler has submitted an article about the war in the Balkan theatre to that legendary Irish journal, The Bell. Geoffrey Taylor, the literary editor, writes back to Butler complaining of a lack of "facts" in the piece. Today's commentators, tormented by fact-checkers and pedantic editors, might benefit from studying Butler's magisterial response:
"Historical facts have that gritty, substantial feel about them only in the examination schools and their too-expensive purlieus. I discard them as building material because they are really too plastic to use except as ornaments. For example, in a small state like Yugoslavia you could get a purely factual account of its creation from a dozen representative citizens, Croat, Bosnian, Slovene, Macedonian, etc., or from representatives of the various economic and religious cross-sections, and each would give a different but quiet truthful picture. When Yugoslavia comes to be reorganized, facts will be so cogent and clamorous and innumerable that they will be used just as seasoning to the theoretic puddings made by the powers. Subjective considerations will weigh the most, shaped by the views current at the time."
As Roy Foster points out in The Irish Story: Telling Tales And Making It Up In Ireland: "The prescience of this does not need to be emphasized. It shows Butler at a dark and uncertain period in the history of his century, looking forward as well as back with that blend of tough realism which he would come to make his own."
So, the next time someone torments you for "facts", tell them about their use in the "theoretic puddings made by the powers". That should conclude the matter, promptly, and in your favour, too.
