On Literature and History

History doesn’t write literature; people do. And while these people are affected by the times in which they live, they are, more importantly, active agents who are pivotal in determining what only later comes to be known as history. For this reason, I am much less likely to use history to understand a text than I am to use a text to understand history. Indeed, while fiction can be used to describe a moment in time, it is usually written to convey a far deeper aspect of the human condition.