Last December I read Trust by Hernán Díaz, about an obscenely wealthy couple in 1920s New York, whose story is told by four competing texts: an infamous novel, an defensive autobiography, a expository memoir, and a lost diary.
I had never encountered this kind of story-telling, but, because of a small clip of Dua Lipa interviewing the author, I wanted to give it a try, and I can say: the novel did not disappoint. The story absolutely delivers, and in such a way that it made me think about my research.
So, the rest of this blog post will contain my reflections about the theme of Trust and how it applies to archival visits.
Let’s go!
(Oh, BTW, even though I won’t spoil anything too much below, I still recommend you to read the book yourself.)
So, the theme of Trust! Well, it is about… Trust. But what kind of trust are we talking about? Trust in what way? Even though the thesis is not spelled out in the text, the author brings forth different understandings of trust by subverting the reader’s expectations of how to relate to the text.
At first, one has the impression from reading the blurb that the set-up of the four different manuscripts is an invitation for the reader to do some detective work and find out the truth that is hidden between the lines. One begins the first two texts from a distance, weighing each word and passage along the way, hoping to pick up the consistencies and contradictories that would contribute to the wider picture transcedending these four texts. Questions of who and what to trust take the stage in the reader’s mind.
However, once the second half of the novel rolls over and new details pile up, the path of the reader’s journey becomes unsteady. If one believes to see through all the loose threads, distortions, ambiguities and unexplored venues, one still has to grapple with all the uncertainty in-between. And when one goes over the last paragraphs, one ends up back where they started - in the middle of the four texts, with no heightened sense of direction. Although there are some story threads that suggest some consistency, there is no clear conclusion, nor a bigger picture. From there, a new question arises: Based on what exactly do we trust?
What the novel does masterfully is to uppercut tendencies of speculation and to force the reader to reconsider their ability to dissect situations reliably as an outside observer. The novel even makes references to stocks and detective novels, which are exemplary vessels of speculation. Although speculation can bleed into real life, whether we speak of a narrative pay-off or an incremented interest, the novel still highlights the narrow view that speculation forces onto life, that is the assumption that we can only make sense of things by deploying highly abstract categories or predictable tropes.
This novel helps me articulate a feeling that I always have at the beginning of every archival visit. It is a very specific moment that comes at me like a jarring music note. Every time I sit at the table, open a box and go over its contents, there is this overwhelm. The original gut feeling that brought me to the table evaporates and for a moment there are no words to make sense of what is passing through my hands. I go over article with wariness and, later, weariness as I reconstruct in my head all the contexts that could have possibly produced the things in the boxes while simultaneously considering the possibilities of being wrong or misguided in some way. At times harsh interrogations start to unfold at the table, with questions like Why does this document exist? Of all the things that could disappear, why does it still exist? Based on what can I trust it? In what kind of context (at least) can I trust the claims that the items make?
Unlike detective novels or dividends, archival visits do not necessarily yield something of predictable value, nor contribute to some bigger story. Visitors are only faced with leftovers of the past, some of which are more easier to decode than others. The trust that one excercises in the archives is therefore made of a different fabric. Unlike in detective novels or at stock markets, trust does not come from bringing everything to the same mental plane and evaluating one thing after the other based on predictable measures and metrics. On the contrary, trust in the archives is unevenly bestowed, it is highly context-sensitive and changes with every new interpretation. Trust is built up, never assumed.
That does not mean that speculation never occurs at archives. I mean: before coming, I suspect something of value to be found, even if I don’t articulate it. And when I reconstruct the contexts for the boxes’ contents, some of the scenarios in my head borders on speculation, they rely on some notions born from predictability. It is just the speculation does not hold the same space in the archives as in other contexts, and how could it in the face of so much mess and noise?
To a certain extent, every one of my archival visits has been a rendez-vous with uncertainty, another meeting with that eery feeling of not quite grasping what life put in front of me (again). But these little moments of discomfort do not discourage a person from coming back. On the contrary, they are when we get to know ourselves a little better, steering us away to from the observer role that some situations in life forces us into. And this is something that the novel captures, quite well.