Lessons from a Master
Adam Hochschild’s take on reading and writing history benefits us all, not just writers.
Last week marked the end of a compelling eight weeks I spent rereading four of narrative historian Adam Hochschild’s books, then listening to him tell the story behind the story of writing them, all thanks to a class offered at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Cal Berkeley.
I first became aware of Hochschild’s work more than 20 years ago, when he published King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. The book takes a deep dive into the blood-drenched tale of Congo in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when it was run as a personal fiefdom by the monumentally avaricious Leopold II, king of Belgium.
When I was in grad school at Cal long ago, African politics in general, and Congo in particular, intrigued me, so I seized upon the book as soon as it appeared. The OLLI class offered me a chance to reread King Leopold’s Ghost and realize again what a brilliantly scary account of colonialism’s darkest corner it is.
The class also featured Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves, a chronicle of the nearly 60-year long movement to abolish slavery in the British Empire; To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914–1918, the braided lives of blockhead English generals and anti-war activists in World War I; and Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939, the wrenching story of the 2,800 men and women who volunteered for the Spanish Republic against Franco’s fascists — and lost.
In the course of the class, Hochschild offered up any number of storytelling strategies — from starting a book project with a casting call (who are the characters and how are they connected?) and building suspense (interwoven characters supply meanwhile-back-at-the-ranch moments) to trusting diaries and journals over memoirs (raw, real-time impressions offer truer insight than accounts shaped and polished after the fact) and composing in scenes (imagine your manuscript as a movie script).
Two of Hochschild’s wisdoms apply not to just to nonfiction writers but to everyone who thinks about this human world.
Ask the unasked question.
That’s what Edmund Dean Morel, a hero of King Leopold’s Ghost, did. An employee of a British shipping company and a fluent French speaker, Morel went to the Antwerp harbor regularly to oversee the loading and unloading of ships on the Congo run. The prevailing and oft-parroted narrative of the time had it that the colony was being managed as a beneficent philanthropy by wise King Leopold, who was destroying the slave trade and advancing civilization across Africa’s heart of darkness.
Then Morel noticed things that didn’t fit the story. Ships outbound to Congo carried army officers, rifles, and ammunition, while inbound vessels returned with valuable cargoes of rubber and ivory. Where, Morel wondered, were the trade goods, building materials, and schoolbooks to support civilization’s spread? Why did administering Congo require so many guns? And where was all the money fetched by that abundance of rubber and ivory ending up?
Morel set himself to answering those questions. Over the next several years his investigative journalism and incessant lobbying launched the first great human rights movement of the 20th century. In the end it overturned King Leopold’s self-aggrandizing cruelty, which had cost the lives of some 10 million Congolese.
Asking the unasked question isn’t just a writer’s technique. It applies to us all as citizens. Think Israel and Palestine or the fate of American democracy: What are the questions we have yet to ask?
“History belongs to all of us.”
That’s how Hochschild put it. The story of the past isn’t the sole province of professional scholars or writers. Every one of us is shaped by historical events that created the present moment. And we can build the future we long for only if we understand how we have gotten where we are.
Hochschild’s books shine a light on some of the darker paths humanity has walked, from colonial Africa to Franco’s Spain. But they illuminate, too, what can happen when people speak up, push back, and claim both past and future. That’s good reason why, even in this time of war and polarization, to feel some small ray of hope.
Feeling what others feel
To learn more about Adam Hochschild’s book and magazine work and his many literary awards, check out his profile at the Cal Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.
A key benefit to reading writers like Hochschild is gaining empathy for people we might not otherwise encounter. In the past couple months, I’ve come across two recent books at the intersection of literature and human rights that take you into the hearts and minds of people on the receiving end of injustice. Dashka Slater does that for high school students in Accountable: The True Story of a Racist Social Media Account and the Teenagers Whose Lives It Changed. And Katya Cengel does it for silenced, suffering children in Straitjackets and Lunch Money: A 10-Year-Old in a Psychosomatic Ward. Like Hochschild’s books, Slater’s and Cengel’s will widen your world.
I love the emphasis on the craft of writing" Good writing Is a skill that can( be learned, and the best way of achieving mastery is by studying the work of accomplished authors such as Stiles and Hochschild.. I hope that other scholars do likewise.
That sounds like a fantastic class! So many great lessons. He's one of my favorite writers.