"This dictum emphasizes both literary scholars’ treatment of historians’ research and the extent to which the writing of history itself creates or fabricates, although one may well see Harvey’s response less as a scholar’s version of poetic justice than as a military historian’s planting of an improvised explosive device."

I may be in literary love with Eric Naiman.

I like to imagine that he had a giant conspiracy board set up to document his research, with lots of pinned-up biographical notes and red string linking all the incestuous citations.