Fidelity: request for input

[mrodoc]

Fidelity can be seen as the art of narrating a story as truthfully or accurately as possible. Certainly there are many cave exploration histories  lacking. fidelity. We now know that the first person to pass the Long Crawl in Dan yr Ogof was not Eileen Davies but all the popular historical accounts lack this fidelity. People may embellish accounts to suit their own purposes. I am currently in the process of writing as faithful a history of the exploration of a cave as I can but even that account will be viewed through the eyes and minds  of the people who wrote the logs (which date back to the day the cave was first entered) and I am sure that when I get to my role in it it my fidelity may well be questioned. Some times fidelity may be discarded for the sake of writing a good story - journalists (nothing personal David) are good at this. The book Is that So contains some excellent tales but I am sure the fidelity to detail might well be lacking!

 

[Kenilworth]

I appreciate these responses. They include a few things I hadn't thought of.
Interestingly, I have had only one response (and a very good one) from American cavers. This is partly due to the smaller audience I was able to reach, but I also believe that this concept is just as foreign to US cavers, if not more so, than it is to UK ones. If anyone has any more to say, I would love to have it soon, as I'm setting down the sequence of my material and arguments for a first draft.