sabon wrote an essay for the hands collection impersonal perspectives : objectivity in ambergrisian history { which probably sold about five copies } : the irrefutable fissure in any theory of `` personal history '' lies in the impulse to find a plateau far above sheer fact , to reveal a lesson or universal `` truth '' that can be mapped to an individual life and intertwined with a complicated intellectual distain : contempt for accuracy , rejection of contradictory evidence , confusion of conjecture with truth , resistance to correction .