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QUOTE 59 from:
Bernstein, M. (2005) 'Hypertext and the linearity of Hisstory', HypertextNow ('96-'99). Available from: http://www.eastgate.com/HypertextNow/archives/History.html; accessed on 21/04/05

The misunderstanding of narrative, the naive belief that narrative is linear, is both pervasive and wrong-headed...
Let us consider, for a moment, that most seemingly-linear of forms, historical narrative in the tradition of Thucydides, Gibbon, McCauley, Henry Adams, Bury, and Shelby Foote....
... But even the simplest historical writing encounters skeptical readers who might question the accuracy of the narrative. Historians from Herodotos onward pause to identify their sources, explain their methods, and to convince skeptical readers that the events the historian relates are accurately recorded. This additional material forms a halo around each event in the narrative; often, debates on methodology and evidence may form halos as large and as complex as the narrative itself. ...
...
... Contemporary eyewitnesses often differ markedly when reporting events, even under ideal conditions. The historical record, moreover, is replete with prejudiced, dishonest, and naive reporters; in some cases, their contribution comes to us only in fragments or through generations of error-prone transcription. Not infrequently, the state of the evidence compels the historian to offer several mutually exclusive interpretations of an event...
..."Meanwhile" is a fateful word for the historical writer, for the historian must eventually cope with simultaneity. Events that take place in different times and different places can be indispensable to understanding later history -- this, after all, is why historians write history in the first place. Whether the separation in space or time is large or small, the writer must establish a new scene and a new context, connect it to what has gone before, and then establish a fresh linkage from the end of the interstitial section to the discussion that follows it....
...Historians must also describe phenomena that occur on disparate scales...
... We see, therefore, that even the most conservatively narrative history is filled with complex textual structure, discursion, and linkage.

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