Historian and Novelist

The Historian and the Story

In his narrative of the Mann Gulch fire, Young Men and Fire, Norman Maclean meditates on the meaning of history and storytelling. In the paragraphs just following the moments when he has presented the heart of the disaster he comments:

"The historian, for a variety of reasons, can limit his account
to firsthand witnesses, although the shortage of firsthand 
witnesses probably does not explain completely why 
contemporary accounts of the Mann Gulch fire avert their eyes 
from the tragedy. If  a storyteller thinks enough of storytelling 
to regard it as a calling, unlike a historian he cannot turn from 
the sufferings of his characters. A storyteller, unlike a historian, 
must follow compassion wherever it leads him. He must be 
able to accompany his characters even into smoke and fire, 
and bear witness to what they thought and felt even when 
they themselves no longer knew. This story of the Mann Gulch 
fire will not end until it feels able to walk the final distance to 
the crosses with those who for the time being are blotted out 
by smoke. They were young and did not leave much behind 
them and need someone to remember them." (Young Men and
Fire, pp 101-102)


By contrast with the work of the historian, the storyteller James Fenimore Cooper, in his historical novel The Prairie, can hold the reader in suspense with the approach of a great prairie fire while the old trapper devises a method of using fire to fight fire and, in doing so, save the party of settlers. Here is the conclusion of the episode in Cooper's words:

"The experience of the trapper was in the right. As the fire gained
strength and heat, it began to spread on three sides, dying of itself
on the fourth, for want of aliment. As it increased, and the sullen
roaring announced its power, it cleared every thing before it, leaving
the black and smoking soil far more naked than if the scythe had swept
the place. The situation of the fugitives would have still been
hazardous had not the area enlarged as the flame encircled them. But
by advancing to the spot where the trapper had kindled the grass, they
avoided the heat, and in a very few moments the flames began to recede
in every quarter, leaving them enveloped in a cloud of smoke, but
perfectly safe from the torrent of fire that was still furiously
rolling onward.

"The spectators regarded the simple expedient of the trapper with that
species of wonder, with which the courtiers of Ferdinand are said to
have viewed the manner in which Columbus made his egg stand on its
end, though with feelings that were filled with gratitude instead of
envy."  (The Prairie, Chapter 23)


James Fenimore Cooper, The Prairie. The Heritage Press, 1960 (1827).
Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire. The University of Chicago Press, 1992.