Bonaparte’s idea of public education was that it should [keep]… social order…. it must, he said, “embrace the nation.” Georges Lefebvre, Napoleon: From 18 Brumaire to Tilsit (154)
Writers of our history as well as more pulpish storytellers who entertain with popular genres such as heroic fantasy must work, as Napoleon says, “to embrace,” to touch us as concretely as they can. We need the solid realities of our humanness, so our writers need to avoid being remote, abstract, “virtual.” Clearly, I think, we need a solid and conservative cast to writing. I do hesitate somewhat with this opening on a versatile young writer, whom I want to promote, since one of my favorite old writers took as a ruling dictum for his work, “First, get general principles.” Samuel Johnson had received this dictum when he was a young man
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