PT156 · S2 · Q8 Historian: A democracy's citizens

This would be correct if it said, "... by the view that only a few famous heroes or notorious villains have shaped all of history". The author wasn't saying that popular narratives are wrong about the quantity of famous heroes and villains (that's what this answer is saying). The author might totally agree that there aren't that many famous heroes / villains. She was just saying it's wrong to think that the group of famous heroes / villains are the causal engine behind all of history.

The author isn't specifically hating on the narrative format. She's objecting to the story the narrative is selling, not the fact that we have a story in the first place. She might think that it would be perfectly conducive to accurate historical understanding if people learned history through popular narratives that conveyed the idea that tons of people, both famous and obscure/unknown, have shaped history.

We know that most people learn history through narratives that imply X, but that doesn't mean that most narratives imply X. We could say that most people saw a movie last year that involved a superhero, but that doesn't mean that most movies involve superheroes. We're always nervous of talking about a MOST group (on Must Be True / Must Be Assumed) if the stimulus never talked about that most group. The stimulus talks about most PEOPLE, but never talks about most HISTORICAL NARRATIVES.

The author wasn't specifically hating on sustaining readers' interest, just as she wasn't specifically hating on the narrative format. She's hating on the message that most people get from narratives that are attempting to sustain the readers' interest, not the delivery system itself. There's more than one way to sustain a readers' interest. One version of history (a flawed version, in the author's mind), does so by telling a dubious story about heroes and villains, but there could be other ways of telling history that sustain readers' interest in a different way and thus can convey a different, more accurate sense of history. Finally, we never heard that these narratives were written for the purpose of sustaining interest. The narratives were probably created for the purpose of teaching people history, and the tactic of trying to sustain interest with a hero/villain arc was a means of achieving the purpose, not the purpose itself.