Well, that may be. It's a big debate, not just something between the two of us, so I would expect some different understandings, plural, among the participants.neilgodfrey wrote: ↑Wed Aug 02, 2017 5:36 pm That the first sentence should be thought to pose a problem for "dichotomizers" tells me that there has been very little agreement on understanding what the debate between "history" and "fiction" is actually about, including the very fundamental distinctions between data, information and evidence; between sources and events; between events and history.
The first sentence is not pointing to "history"; it points to "data" to be assessed like any other data that requires interpretation and analysis etc.
As I parse the sentence which you pointed out, the only part about data was the final "including" clause, which introduced an example datum. That item was of interest (Vidal made a special point about it in the linked material), and mentioning a datum seemed appropriate having already mentioned Vidal's goals and methods. To mention a datum doesn't make the whole sentence about data.
Or is your objection that Vidal erred in how he relied on that bit of intelligence he got from his family? If that's it, then it would seem like a narrow disagreement.
If I may take the liberty of closing on-topic, Gore Vidal was an excellent example of a non-academic whose novels about the human past were valuable to many readers as (in the felicitous phrase of another poster) educated opinion. I have no idea whether or not Paul Steven McGrane approaches that level, but "non-academic" should not end the discussion of the merits of McGrane's presentation.