NavList:

   

Reply

Thanks for your response. I agree with what you say.

As you can see, the Americana had it wrong. A half-truth (and what they
have is less) is often incorrect (or a lie, depending, of course, on
circumstances.)

Very often, sources, even respectable sources, parrot the same correct and
misinformation, especially in the field of literature and art. Somehow,
ever since Plato's Ion, the public has expected creative figures to be
"abnormal" or not quite like everyone else in one way or the other: drunks,
substance abusers, wife beaters, homosexuals, suffering from a sexual
disorder or disease, and so forth. Of course, some famous people fit one or
the other of these descriptions, but so does the general populace. The only
credible study of creative people, done in the 1960s, showed a
statistically significant tendency for artists to be manic depressive.

As an example of even a benign error, in the 1930s, someone described the
appearance of Ernest Hemingway's chest hair as so think it looked as if he
had a "toupee." Well, later on, the chest toupee (absurd though it was)
became a "fact" repeated by reliable sources.

Go figure.

--Sam Blate
Professor of English Emeritus
Montgomery College
Rockville, MD


At 12:08 AM 4/16/2005, you wrote:
>Dear Sam,
>No one questioned your honesty.
>The death certificate you cite
>does not contradict to what Americana
>and most other sources say.
>(A doctor usually says what s/he sees,
>it is not his/her business to speculate
>whether an overdose happened accidentally
>or intentionally.)
>A.
>
>On Fri, 15 Apr 2005, Sam Blate wrote:
>
> > Dear Gordon,
> >
> > Thanks for making an honest man of me.
> > The death certificate is in the
> > museum for anyone to see.
> > As an academic, I've learned to rely on primary
> > evidence in most cases.
> >
> > --Sam Blate
> >
> > >It says that he died of Uremic Poisoning with an
> > >accidental overdose of morphine.

   

Reply