10 Comments

Loved reading about this, * almost * as much as I loved hearing you talk about it :) xoxo

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In person is always better . . . Thanks!

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Cool piece. Educational!

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Thank you, sir!

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Captain Adler, you're a bad motherfucker!

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Imagine my hand sweeping back over the side of my head.

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We truly have to look to fully understand. You prove this, my deep study, reader-friend. Though no direct comparison, my example is what I learned from the fab film _The Big Short_ that opens with this epigraph by Mark Twain: “It ain't what you don't know that gets you in trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.” The implications here resonate well beyond what you've show. Others, do you really know what Magellan did and where he died? Find out.

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That's exactly it, Mary -- what you say and the Twain. Thank you.

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Well said: "Everything in those two sentences is true. Yet they distort and misguide any true understanding of the events and the experience. Events. Experience. The difference."

So much of this is true of Columbus, as well. Even Cabeza de Vaca, who has fared better in some critical circles and acquits himself reasonably well in print, can't be read at face value. This is where one of those big academic words -- intertextuality -- comes in.

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The Narváez expedition and Cabeza de Vaca -- now there's another story I'd love to have time to try my hand at! Truly astonishing. But I've already scratched one prospective novel from my to do list in the decision that I address its themes in the Magellan story. I may end feeling the same about the Narváez expedition. Still, great connection to make. Thanks for adding it.

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