10 / CHRONICLESnTHRICE-TOLD TALESnPolitics and tale-telling are virtually inseparable activities.nGreat political events—wars, rebellions, socialncrusades—do not exert their full measure of influence untilnthey are whitded into legends. More than one Britishnstatesman has derived his understanding of the Wars of thenRoses from Shakespeare’s Histories, and in the UnitednStates the stories of Washington at Valley Forge, Lincolnnthe man of sorrows, and Teddy Roosevelt at San Juan Hillnhave been told and retold, written down, footnoted, playednupon the stage, and filmed so often that we are scarcelynaware of them. Our heroes are a part of our experience andndefine, more than anything else, the aspirations of thenAmerican character.nrnAi^nPERSPECTIVEnby Thomas FlemingnnnThere is, however, another side to this union of politicsnand myth: powerful plays, novels, and (perhaps) films havena way of becoming political matters. Richard II put Shakespearenin danger, when the Earl of Essex had it performednon the eve of his rebellion. (Elizabeth was understandablynuncomfortable with the depiction of usurpation and regicide.)nAddison’s Cato was cheered not only by the Whigs,nfor whom it was written, but also by the Tories who wishednto appropriate the message and convert resistance to royalnauthority into a defense of legitimate government.nBut it is not only overtly political works which stir upnsuch controversy. Huckleberry Finn remains a subject ofndispute, both for its portrayal of ante-bellum Southern lifenand for its use of the word n—r. A bowdlerized version isnsaid to be in the works. The more modern tale of boyhood,nA Catcher in the Rye, has also been the target of the censorsnwho did not like the explicitness of its language or thenimplications of adolescent rebellion. On the other side ofnthe political spectrum, there is some evidence that liberalncritics are increasingly disenchanted with Hemingway andnFitzgerald, largely because of their unpleasant Jewish charactersn(remember Robert Cohn’s big nose? or Gatsby’snsinister partner, Meyer Wolfsheim?).nWhat is there about the novel—or any fiction, for thatnmatter—to excite such passion? Words are, after all, a weaknand slovenly building material. The tritest cliches in anrhetorical handbook—almost all of them—are variationsnon the theme of “words cannot express …” or “the worldnwill little note what we say here …” Plato banished poetsnfor their deceits, and his most wayward disciple, thenclassical philologist Friedrich Nietzsche, condemned allnpoets as liars. There is little cause for wondering at theirnimpatience. So much of literary art, the novel, the tale, thenhistory, consists of telling palpable lies, of pulling not thenwool, but the polyester over the reader’s eyes. No matternwhat he may have felt in his youth, a grown man tires ofnmost novels. So few of them encapsule the feeblest glimmernof human experience. Ultimately, the fate of a RobertnJordan or an Anna Karenina can scarcely be said to engagenthe interest of a reflective person. In earlier times, novelistsnthemselves were sensible of their degraded position in thenrealm of letters. Jane Austen, one of the best of the lot,nmore than once puts a defense of novel-reading into ancharacter’s mouth. Even so, it is remarkable that a writernshould gain a reputation, grow rich on a pack of lies, nonmatter how artfully arranged.nFew historians these days lay any claim to art. Now, theyn