It’s funny. I know very well the sort of lineage that I’m taking, ideologically. I also now have a good historical skeleton ready to roll (19 mini-eras inside 5 ages), alongside big historical events.
But it’s like being confronted with something large right in front of you — where do you even start? I’ve dawdled a lot so far. Started reading Aaron Burr by Gore Vidal and The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy while I fumble around.
Vidal’s series is nothing that you’d want to bring into this sort of project. It makes so many conjectures in his smarmy read of American history, even though there is quite a lot of research he clearly did on minute historical events.
I think Aaron Burr is a generally wretched human being, and I thought that well in advance of Lin Manuel Miranda’s musical. His take, through Burr’s mouth, on Washington doesn’t offend me, but I think it’s quite a bit of unnecessary edginess.
This is a diversion, but it is good to help get yourself out of a funk. I started Ellroy on a lark. The genre isn’t even really my type of thing, but eh.
I ordered a series called Debating the Issues in Pro and Con Primary Documents in hopes that it will jog me enough to get started.
The theory is that, since this series covers the most critical issues, one-by-one and from two sides, that this will force myself to commit to one and drive forth.