Re: VMs: Re: British Library [re-sent, sorry!]

[Nick Pelling <nickpelling@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

At 10:08 14/12/2004 +0000, Adam McLean wrote:
> Yes there was a good documentary here in the UK a few years
> back on Linear B.
>
> "A Very English Genius: How Michael Ventris Cracked Linear B",
> Channel 4, 2002.
>
> But then that documentary could come to a neat conclusion as well
> as focussing on the personality and personal struggles of Ventris.

While it's true that a VMs documentary ~could~ look at the drives, lives & 
personal struggles of Newbold, Feely, Strong, Brumbaugh, Levitov, Stojko, 
Rugg etc, the problem is that their solutions/explanations each seem highly 
likely to be wrong (though in different ways, and for different reasons). 
The general pattern (some might say "anti-pattern") connecting them seems 
to be: reading what you want to read, and then post-rationalising that into 
the only possible solution.

Arguably, this does suggest a challenge: of building up a close analytical 
reading of what we can learn about exactly what the VMs is, from what it 
(probably) is not. However, a TV documentary is probably not the right 
place for this kind of research. :-o

FWIW, I can weave a good yarn about what the VMs probably is, and that in 
itself should make a good documentary (though admittedly one closer to 3 
hours than to 1): but as it remains based on an art history proof (and not 
a cryptological "smoking gun" proof), I continue to try to make it more 
solid. Hopefully one day soon I'll get there... fingers crossed! :-)

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....  


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