Sunday, April 2, 2017

More on fake news

Perhaps the most interesting story to emerge from the efforts to restore the Veblen farmhouse in Minnesota was the discovery that the Joseph Dorfman biography Thorstein Veblen and His America, long considered the definitive account of Veblen's life and scholarship, was very unreliable. The man who was paying for the restoration had promised, in writing, to the Minnesota Historical Society that he intended to use Dorfman's biography as the definitive word when it came to restoration decisions. But it soon became apparent that the spectacular house that Veblen's father had built on the edge of USA civilization with hand tools did not enhance the narrative that Dorfman was trying to sell. He wanted to Thorstein Veblen to have grown up in alog cabin among barely literate immigrants only to be rescued by the westward advance of Congregational educational institutes like Carleton College. So this monument of ingenuity became a log cabin in his telling.

Needless to say, calling this primo pioneer dwelling a log cabin did not provide much information on how to proceed with the repairs. Fortunately, Dorfman had sent out advance copies to some Veblen family members probably hoping for some sort of endorsement. Older brother Andrew was incensed at the portrayal of the Veblen's economic and social circumstances and wrote several pointed letters trying to get the account changed. Dorfman did NOT want to change his narrative because so much of his bio revolved around the idea that Veblen had miraculously emerged from an impoverished and primitive