When History Doesn’t Do What We Wish It Would
In Ed Park’s new novel, the past is slippery, elusive, and alive.
by Krys Lee
Dec 15, 2023
4 minutes
In his 1961 book, What Is History?, the British historian E. H. Carr sought to answer that very question. Carr argued that history is a perpetual dialogue between the past and the present, that it is never neutral or objective. Ed Park has a slightly more idiosyncratic way of putting it in his new novel, , but he essentially lands in the same place. One character, a Korean writer working under the pen name Echo, offers that history is “a) a vital lesson b) amusement for the idle c) the sum of symbols d) a record of pain.” It is a slippery, elusive story that largely depends on one’s point of view.
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