On “History by Text and Thing”

To the editor:

I read with interest ShawnaKim Lowey-Ball’s recent article, “History by Text and Thing” (Perspectives on History, March 2020). I agreed and disagreed, as you’ll see reflected in my upcoming book, Beyond Truman: Robert H. Ferrell and Crafting the Past (Rowman & Littlefield). Diving into archives, or whatever source material is relevant, is essential, yet the secondary literature is indispensable as well. I was shocked that she would dismiss it so easily, as “not really doing history” (italics in original). We all stand on the shoulders of those who have come before, and while jumping into archives—what I did before I started my book—was imperative, meaning-making really took on much more depth and nuance once I knew how the topic was situated in what others had accomplished.

Douglas A. Dixon
Austin, Texas

To the editor:

Many thanks for ShawnaKim Lowey-Ball’s rumination on research, noting the importance of “serendipitous historical discovery.” There I was in northern Italy, full of ideas regarding my project on Italian Futurism and the infamous serate of performance, when in one local newspaper after another I kept coming across stories and editorials about an alleged epidemic of suicide. I kept saying: “But I’m not here for this,” even if I did have a predisposed understanding of Durkheim on the subject of Selbstmord in the Goethian German context. At a certain point my research led me to proclaim, “It doesn’t matter what you’re looking for; it matters what you’ve found.” Thus my book, Tired of Living: Suicide in Italy from National Unification to World War I, 1860–1915, which would never have been written if I had stuck with my first project.

Ty Geltmaker
Los Angeles