Historical reality is messier than fiction yet follows its essential plot.

Evidence

If this were a work of fiction, the character John Binns would, along with other radicals, jump on the Jackson bandwagon when it made its first appearance in 1822, and be rewarded by a government post through which he dispensed public works jobs to working-class Irish while upholding the slave system and helping to subjugate the free black people of the North. While that is essentially what happened, the facts are considerably messier than that simple tale (one of the reasons why art is often truer than life), and since the rules of the historian’s craft differ from those of the novelist’s, the writer will have to extract the essential truth from a series of complicated and bewildering events. — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 262

Categorization

• FICTION: The ‘art is truer than life’ remark plus the Binns-to-alderman arc could seed fiction about how a revolutionary becomes an enforcer.
• XREF: connects to: Irish whiteness required excluding blacks from any shared occupation and erasing memory — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 400; A historical event must become a story before it can be communicated. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 784; Historical truth stubbornly resists the storyteller s shaping instincts. — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 874 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Historical truth stubbornly resists the storyteller s shaping instincts. #corroborates (0.90) — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 874
• Real history lacks tidy dramatic arcs and tidy causation. #expands (0.90) — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 1173
• A historical event must become a story before it can be communicated. #corroborates (0.80) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 784
• Historical events become communicable only by being turned into stories. #corroborates (0.80)