One recent problem I've encountered is my own inability to accept that my heroes are flawed. I know that folks aren't perfect, no matter what they do that amazes or awes me, but I've had to give up no certain biographies in recent years because I'm not willing to surrender my love of someone's work. And yes, it does matter. If someone was a SHIT of a human being, no matter the beauty he created, if someone turned out to be a monster, no matter what she offered to the world, it affects how I look at their art.

But that's not the issue here. I recently read a book that brought up an annoying thing that some writers do. They create reality. They create history. They want SO much for something to be true that they decide "it MUST have been this way." Because there is no other way to explain it, because THIS happened, then THAT MUST have happened. And they do this without any proof, documentation, testimony. There is no record, there are no pictures, there is no oral history so it MUST HAVE happened in this way.

Bullshit. You don't get to assume like that. Yes, there are leaps of "faith" if you will where you can suggest that you think this, therefore that. But you don't know.

Years ago, when i first learned about Frida Kahlo from a documentary film, i went to read about her. the biography I found spent a lot of time telling me what Kahlo MUST HAVE THOUGHT, MUST HAVE SAID, because of this or that. There was no diary, no letter, no documentation. The writer had not spoken to anyone who was there. She just apparently KNEW. She channeled Kahlo, maybe because she had submerged herself into the woman's life. So she KNEW.

Bullshit.

As much as I wanted to know things about Frida Kahlo I did not feel as if I could trust what I had read. My refrain became "how do YOU know?"

Some years later, I found a fascinating book about a fascinating subject. it told the story of how slaves in the American south found their way north with the help of quilts. It was SO cool. And of course, it's plausible. Slaves often made quilts - crazy quilts from scrap material either thrown out by the household, or given to them, rags, you name it.

The theory here is that since you wash a quilt and hang it on a fence to dry, that you could use these quilts for messages. As maps. Since it was illegal to teach a slave to read, he information on traveling to freedom was coded. Heck, any folkie knows "Follow the Drinking Gourd", the song which tells you to aim for the North Star as you escape. So quilts could have symbols, lines and colors, stitching that would mark a river, the trees, which road was safe.

None of these quilts exit. IF they ever did. There is lore. Women who now quilt tell stories of their ancestors, their great-grandmothers quilting in slave cabins. The book I read never once said "this happened." It said in far too many ways"this MUST HAVE HAPPENED". not one person said it happened, there are no quilts to look at. this is all understandable, mind you, but without any proof of any kind, even someone saying "yes, my relative made a quilt, she taught me how to do it. These are the symbols".No one ever saw one, even a piece, heard that story about how to make a quilt with that information. I want it to be so. It MAY be so. But there was nothing in this book to tell me it WAS SO. The hope and belief that like those hymns and songs, these visual escape plans existed does not make them real, even believing that it must have happened like this.

The other day I read a book about the shocking murders at Taliesin in Wisconsin. The horrid murders of seven people, adults and children at the home built by Frank Lloyd Wright was stunningly awful, monstrous and impossible to comprehend. And no one knows why it happened. And dammit, this book does not really help. The author spends more time on the scandal (major though it was) of Wright and his relationship with Mamah Cheney than on the murder. It's pretty clear that Julian Carlson, a black man who worked at Taliesin took an axe, killed several people and then doused the house with gasoline and set it on fire. Monstrous. He then tried to escape but was caught. He swallowed muriatic (hydrochloric) acid as a suicide attempt. Living several weeks after the event, he said little and died without a trial.

He MUST HAVE been enraged by racial slurs, the author says. It's pretty obvious that he was unstable, possibly paranoid, maybe insane. though evidence is scanty, but no one knows what triggered the attack, no one knows why he would kill children, no one knows. Why? Because his throat was damaged he could not tell anyone what happened. That seems thin, doesn't it?

No one in all of Wisconsin apparently thought to say "write it down ." There is no hint that anyone in contact with the man asked if he could write, if he wanted to explain. He was also never in a hospital, but was seen by doctors. There was, from what the book says, no attempt to bring someone to him who might elicit some explanation. So the author decided what must have happened. There are reports, there is testimony from those who survived at least for a time. The man's wife was held, questioned and released. She was never heard of again. And though she did apparently discuss her husband's instability, there is nothing to tell us why. And what sent me over the edge was this. The man was "a Negro" and yes, in 1914 this meant he was, at best, second class. Of course racism was common and casual and prevalent in 1914. i don't deny that for a second. Racism was commonplace and accepted. the hell of being black in a country that accepted that lynchings happened, that supported the Klan and that assumed, in so many places, the superiority of whites was how Julian Carlton lived.

There is a rumor that one of the workmen at Taliesin called him a "black son of a bitch". Believe it? Probably. But the author then suggests that such slurs MUST HAVE sent him over the edge because of how they referred to him in the press. Right. The quotes from the 1914 newspapers make it clear that this is not "how people talked". The press referred to Taliesen as " a love bungalow". Do we think that is how people talked? They referred to the man as "a negro fiend" and a "black brute". Do we think that is how the other workmen at Taliesin spoke to this man (who may or may not have wanted to quit, who may or may not have calmly served soup after murdering Mamah Cheney and her son.)

Face it. You don't KNOW and you can't know because the time machine hasn't been perfected. Do NOT tell me it MUST have been this way because you think so, or you assume or want it to be so, because that would resolve an unresolved story. There's nothing in what you have written to make it so. Frida was dead when you wrote her story, the quilts simply are not around (dammit) and no one ever got Julian Carlton to explain, even a little, why he committed such a heinous and brutal act. Don't give me "it must have happened this way". That's not scholarship, that's wishful thinking at best.