THAT FAT OLD MAN in faded overalls is well suited to introduce this study of the historical imagination in U.S. and Latin American fiction. History has indeed been one of the severest figures of the America's collective imagination. The barnyard fairly reeks of that familiar historical anxiety, the motivation and theme of so much of our fiction. There he goes now, clutching his instruments, terrorizing those dumb clucks whose collective fate he seals. Then again, he's fickle, so tomorrow we may get corn. But what's this? History hobbles? Or is he hobbled by the writers who created him? After all, they too travel along that apocalyptic road to Pittsfield, Babylon. We might easily mistake Charles Simic's old man for the eighth deadly sin in some medieval morality play, ready to take the stage with the likes of gluttony and lust and avarice. But no. He is, in fact, the first deadly sin of the novel.