There is, certainly, something likable about this process: It’s nice to think that the weirdos get to decide what matters about the past, since it’s the weirdos who care the most.

When any idea becomes symbolically dominant, those who dislike the idea will artificially inflate the necessity of whatever it opposes. (Second Amendment purists do this all the time.)

But critics and music historians hate sentimental love songs, so these artists and songs struggle to get a place in the history books. Transgressive rockers, in contrast, enjoy lasting fame . . . right now, electronic dance music probably outsells hip-hop. In my opinion, this is identical to the punk-versus-disco trade-off of the 1970s. My

the official bin Laden story] exists in a kind of liminal state, floating somewhere between fact and mythology.”

So while it’s absurd to think that all of history never really happened, it’s almost as absurd to think that everything we know about history is real.

The practical reality is that any present-tense version of the world is unstable. What we currently consider to be true—both objectively and subjectively—is habitually provisional. But the modern problem is that reevaluating what we consider “true” is becoming increasingly difficult.

It engenders a delusion of simplicity that benefits people with inflexible minds. It

hegemonic scotoma.

the 139-year gap between the publication of Anna Karenina and today is much vaster than the 139-year gap between 1877 and 1738. This acceleration is real, and it will be harder and harder for future generations to relate to “old” books in the way they were originally intended.