I just read a pretty remarkable book by Rebecca West called A Train of Powder. It's hard for me to explain just why it impressed me so much, but I know it has something to do with the book's repeated, though unstated, contention that truth ultimately rests with the individual. I'll paste my hasty, first-draft British Studies essay below, which may give a better indication of what the book is about, but I want to single single out one quote in particular:

The position of man is obviously insecure unless he can find out what is happening around him. That is why historians publicly pretend that they can give an exact account of events in the past, though they privately know that all the past will let us know about events above a certain degree of importance is a bunch of alternative hypotheses.

Tonight I didn't get much work done, really, except an addition by subtraction: one short essay I had planned for my thesis was completely shot down by a discussion I had with Brendan and Kevin, so I saved some wasted effort. Considering how late it is, though, that is a grim satisfaction, at best.

A Train of Powder (1955)

Rebecca West strikes me as the type of journalist who went into the field solely because she wanted to seek out truth. In A Train of Powder she builds on her reporting from several criminal trials, most notably the Nuremberg trials following World War II, to pursue truth’s judicial counterpart, justice. Six long, dazzling essays make up the book: three on Nuremberg, one on a lynching trial in Greenville, South Carolina, one on an unsolved murder in London, and one on the case of a Soviet agent in England. The Nuremberg essays form the backbone of the book because they tackle the seemingly most famous and most important of the trials, when the Allies intended to forgive the German people by condemning the Nazi leaders. But West says, “these trials have set up a dozen itching abscesses of ignorance and hatred in the public mind.” For the British, the Americans, the French, and the Russians all held differing views about justice and how to administer it, and the hybrid version they doled out at Nuremberg did not satisfy everyone involved. West withholds judgement. Instead she tells us, “We had learned what [Göring and his associates] did, beyond all doubt, and that was the great achievement of the Nuremberg trial.” This focus on the actions of the individual defines West’s book.

In all of the trials, finding the truth proves impossible, and so what the courts find just does not seem exactly right. West combines these considerations of guilt and innocence with telling descriptions of the families, friends, and witnesses affected by the crime to reveal to us that justice—and thus, truth—reside with the individual. This revelation allows West to draw great conclusions from small events: “The position of man is obviously insecure unless he can find out what is happening around him. That is why historians publicly pretend that they can give an exact account of events in the past, though they privately know that all the past will let us know about events above a certain degree of importance is a bunch of alternative hypotheses.” West’s carefully sculpted sentences—her critics would call them belabored—can make her prose heavy, but the momentum of this weight gives her conclusions convincing force. Ultimately, West’s ability to give people and places life, even as the slaughter of WWII lingers in the background, leads to moments of truth and makes this book rewarding.