4 ms·
This is a bunch of pretentious hock. The linguistic turn has nothing to do with this. In fact, I hate how you bring up an external source and quote extensively
by unclesaamm 13y ago
This is a bunch of pretentious hock. The linguistic turn has nothing to do with this. In fact, I hate how you bring up an external source and quote extensively from it as if it proves anything. Okay, armchair liberal arts student, here's the smack:
When you purport to be writing a factual account, there are certain standards that you can be held accountable to.
Take, for instance, "A Million Little Pieces". It was a memoir written by James Frey in 2003 that absolutely imploded when people found out that he made up large chunks of the material (wikipedia now lists it as "semi-fictional"). There's a difference between the two categories, and the difference is in exactly the type of anecdotal evidence that you don't think is important.
Edited to add:
I agree that maybe the overall narrative of the book--the feeling and reportage of Amazon's culture--may still be accurate. I'd like to see more examples of inaccuracies before drawing any conclusions. It's also important to bear in mind just how much of a vested interest MacKenzie Bezos has in debunking this, because presumably the book makes Jeff Bezos and Amazon look bad (haven't read it yet though).
- rmk2 13y agoAd hominem aisde, your edit seems to actively counter your other point. My whole point is that both sites spin a narrative a certain way because they both would like history to look a certain way. The reason why I "extensively quote" an external source is to show that there are other elements involved in the perception of truth than just the given data points. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with pointing out inaccurate data. However, there seems to be a general propensity to then discount a whole narrative in favour of the seemingly corrected narrative of the person doing the corrections. The whole point of bringing up the underlying bias of any historical account, however, is to just keep in mind that all correction is capable of doing is to erect another narrative. Which one you find more convincing is entirely yours to decide. I merely (or, perhaps, "merely") contest that what happens in the review is an opposition of (semi-)fiction on one hand and "historical truth" on the other.