Convenience of remembering is often at odds with historical accuracy. For convenience we divide a past into epochs, and then we fall into thinking of epochs as if they were uniform and simple and followed each other in a regular march of events; then we begin thinking of actual people as if they had modeled themselves on the historians' models. For example, take Stephen Crane (1871-1900) and Frank Norris (1870--1902), who are frequently paired as the first wave of an American naturalist movement. They would hardly have said so. Crane was content with the name of realist, and Norris wanted no part of realism. Norris called himself a naturalist, to be sure, but, then, he unblushingly called himself a romantic, too. And as for their being part of an identifiable movement, the two men met only once, and they did not take to each other at all. In an exemplary way, they illustrate the constant need for renewing historical inquiry.