The things we can never know

 In our discussion of history being told as a fictional narrative, one of the main points that came up (or at least one of the points that I picked up on) was that since we can never know whether or not a supposedly fictional event happened, technically we can't differentiate between some of the fiction that Doctorow writes and the actual events that took place at that time.

One big example of this is the encounter between Houdini and Harry Thaw. In the story, Houdini is escaping from a cell on the same block that Harry Thaw is being kept in the Tombs. He is cuffed naked in the cell and must break free and put on his clothes as part of his act. As he completes this he sees Thaw across the gantry watching intently. When he begins putting his clothes on, Thaw begins taking his own clothes off until finally he is naked and Houdini is fully dressed. At this point, "The prisoner came up to the front of his cell and raised his arms in a shockingly obscene manner he thrust his hips forward and flapped his penis between the bars...Houdini was to tell no one of this strange confrontation" (34). This example depicts an event that while very strange, cannot completely be proven to be untrue. Because Doctorow says that Houdini never told anyone about this, there is a chance that this is all completely true and Houdini just never told anyone. This is an example of this blurred line between fiction and history that adds to the question of whether or not history is all just a fictional narrative. 

The argument for history being fiction is largely dependent on the fact that most of our history comes in the forms of anecdotes or personal accounts that have been verified by any number of means. This "human aspect" of our history is a crucial piece in this puzzle because there is a chance (although statistically minuscule) that every personal account we have is wrong and doesn't tell us what actually happened. While this is very, very unlikely, a result of this is that much of our history is clouded by perspectives, which only give one side of the event. 

As a result of this potentially unstable "human element" in history we tend to gravitate towards hard facts and "proof" of events when trying to verify things in history. Facts such as recorded statistics or hard evidence like video recordings from surveillance cameras. But even these things can be susceptible to perspective or not telling the whole story. One example that we discussed briefly in class was the assassination of John F. Kennedy. This is a very controversial example because although we had seemed to have "hard evidence" supporting the presumption that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assailant, video footage has emerged that seems to show a second shooter. 

These examples seem to serve only to complicate the question, as there is not one definitive answer. Personally, I was skeptical towards history being a fictional narrative, but after this discussion I have become more open to the idea and I now agree that the line between is definitely more blurred than I had previously thought. What do you guys think?