This not a feel-bad-story. It's a think-hard-story.

What makes Simon Schama such a good story teller?

This talk for an uninspired gathering of technocratic Google-employees in a terrible ambiance - note how difficult Schama it finds to keep seated and how shaky the table is where he occasionaly bumps into while gesticulating ferociously - provides excellent study material for discerning the specific traits of Schama's story telling techniques.

It all starts with the tiresome British habit of excusing oneself. I was sick, so maybe not completely in form, i might speak with consumption, watch out for my bacils etc. and added to this the ridiculous assertion that this is such a great classroom, an extraordinary venue to teach, whilst all present know that this occasion is almost insulting for arguably the greatest historian alive to come to. It's all part of Schama's retoric scheme because while babbling he doesnt raise his voice to introduce his main question, almost as if it is as important a topic as his soar throat. This is effective. Usually the temptation to introduce the main subject with te force of a bomb proves counter-productive. Think of the Power Point bombast where the main topic is highlighted in big beeping letters, rotating, flashing, screaming for attention, over-acting as if to hide the shallowness of the subject.No, Schama silenty slides into fast gear.
'Why should anyone be interested in a story of slaves that voted with their feet?'. Contrary to common usage he does NOT sum up the reasons, does NOT give an account of the steps his argument will take. Of course he doesn't do that: it will spoil the story. It makes the listener lazy because he does not have to pay attention to the details, the anecdotes, the little stories that our personal lives are. Schama says enigmatically: 'The answer is summed up in one life, that of Harry Washington'.

The sheer brilliance of this phrase deserves closer inspection. It sums up one of the main techniques in Schama's technique of representing the past. The personal is where the truth is. General laws and big idelogical formula as 'Freedom and equality' are but shadows of the concrete reality of the personal. This approach of Schama contrasts with the tendency to formulate answers in general formula. The particular is a serving maid for the general law. Truth is the general. The personal is deduced from the general. The individual is a prisoner of ideology, his race, his time, his generation, his surroundings, his biology. 'The answer is summed up in one life, that of Harry Washington'. Note the almost oxymoronic combination of 'summed up' and 'a personal life'. Isn't a personal life the opposite of something that can be summed up, a vast landscape of possibilities, wrong turns, new roads, the vagueness of personal dreams. How can a personal life be a summed up answer to such a big question?

It can be. But in Schama's vision this answer is always complicated, as complicated and rich as a personal life itself. No essay schema's, no clear and decisive general laws. Schama makes this complexity visible by weaving details and little stories into the thread of the leading question and to give this pattern more depth he also digresses on the general character of history itself, the storylike quality of history and most amazingly also on the specific philosophy that underlies the writing of history itself . How does he do that?

'So this is a story of cynical motives that produced extraordinary, inadvertent good'. This assertion follows after Schama exposed the dramatic tension that structures the story...more tomorrow.