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> If it's non-fiction and a long time ago, you find that most people can't remember much of anything, and certainly not any dialog. It's unclear to me whether

> If it's non-fiction and a long time ago, you find that most people can't remember much of anything, and certainly not any dialog. It's unclear to me whether you're applying this statement to Kernighan's Unix history, which I haven't read, but he's given some good talks on the matter in recent years that serve as counterexamples to the notion that he doesn't remember anything. Whether he knows enough to write something that's compelling... I mean, seriously, I don't even know what it would take for a history of Unix to be compelling. I see that your book is a historical novel. Maybe that's the way to go. > K&R was a real masterpiece. He has written a number of very good books. (It occurs to me that the guy is in his late seventies in addition to working without an editor, but I'm not going to jump to any conclusions about the writing without looking at the book)

AlbertCory 5y ago
"can't remember much of anything" : well, until you've tried asking people things about the past, maybe reserve judgment about how perfect memories are. I'm sure Kernighan remembers certain things that he did, and that's fine for a memoir. Usually, though, if you ask someone else who was there, they either don't remember it at all, or have a completely different set of facts. Or they've died or otherwise become unreachable. One of my podcast interviewers said he'd talked to three people who were at the Jobs-PARC meetings, and gotten three different stories about what happened. The stories we've all read about Hitler's last days were established by Hugh Trevor-Roper [1], and he talked to hundreds of people, comparing their stories to each other, and making sure they hadn't coordinated their stories. He did it so well that the facts have never been seriously challenged. (unfortunately, he fell for the fake "Hitler diaries" story much later, which kinda damaged his reputation.) I had some documents to go on (thanks to bitsavers), and I guess Brian must have, too. But I didn't go nearly into the level of thoroughness HT-R did. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_TrevorRoper#Investigating_Hitler's_last_days https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_TrevorRoper#Investigating...

AlbertCory 5y ago

"can't remember much of anything" : well, until you've tried asking people things about the past, maybe reserve judgment about how perfect memories are. I'm sure Kernighan remembers certain things that he did, and that's fine for a memoir. Usually, though, if you ask someone else who was there, they either don't remember it at all, or have a completely different set of facts. Or they've died or otherwise become unreachable. One of my podcast interviewers said he'd talked to three people who were at the Jobs-PARC meetings, and gotten three different stories about what happened. The stories we've all read about Hitler's last days were established by Hugh Trevor-Roper [1], and he talked to hundreds of people, comparing their stories to each other, and making sure they hadn't coordinated their stories. He did it so well that the facts have never been seriously challenged. (unfortunately, he fell for the fake "Hitler diaries" story much later, which kinda damaged his reputation.) I had some documents to go on (thanks to bitsavers), and I guess Brian must have, too. But I didn't go nearly into the level of thoroughness HT-R did. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_TrevorRoper#Investigating_Hitler's_last_days https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_TrevorRoper#Investigating...