By Bonnie Stanard
As a writer of historical fiction, I am
disturbed by Andrew Delbanco’s claim that a novelist using historical
characters and settings has no obligation to factual reconstructions. Delbanco, in a review of a novel on Abraham
Lincoln, says:
The novelist … can take liberties—suppressing this, embellishing that, even inventing situations, characters, and words that were never actually spoken … A novel is beholden to no external measure of truth; it must only be true to itself.*
Only true to itself!
Why write historical fiction if you’re only going to be true to your
imagination? When I place my characters in history, I have freedom in defining
their thoughts and motives. Their acts and the events surrounding them are
restrained by historical fact. The defense that some writers pose of “capturing the spirit” of the truth doesn’t give them the freedom to alter facts.
Think of it this way, should we create
distortions that may change our readers’ perceptions of historical people or
events? What would you think of novels in which:
John
Brown’s army wins a victory at Harpers Ferry
Hitler has
a love-child with a Jewish mistress
Alexander
G. Bell beats his wife
Al Capone
is elected mayor
Henry Ford
murders his brother
The Wright
Brothers bash a gay bar
In the same vein, I would assert that
movies have a similar responsibility to history. When script writers create
events contrary to proven (as opposed to speculative) history, they break faith
with their audience. For example, in The
Patriot is a scene in which British soldiers burn down a church filled with
families, an event with no supporting historical evidence. In cases such as
this, the fabricated excitement arouses misguided feelings of insult or
mistreatment.
I can’t agree more with Edward Rutherford, author of Sarum and other historical novels, who
said in an interview :
My fictional characters are free to follow their personal destinies; but
I never alter the historical record just to suit my convenience, or my
prejudices. Novelists and movie-makers are sometimes tempted to do that and
maybe they believe it doesn't matter. I think it does matter.
… so much political propaganda is based upon the falsification of
history. An extreme example would be the medieval blood myth told against the
Jews, that they kidnapped and sacrificed Christian children … It seems to me
that those of us in the business of storytelling, in books, plays or movies,
have an ethical obligation not to mislead our audiences over the historical
record, especially when subjects may be emotive and affect our attitudes to
others. The bigger the audience, the greater our responsibility; and I don't
think we can evade that responsibility, whether we like it or not.**
Because our stories have the power to create myths, we writers of
historical fiction have a responsibility to the record. We can distance ourselves from propaganda by sticking to a
framework of facts. If that’s too much of a burden, other genres are less demanding, such as
scifi or fantasy.
*The NY Review of Books on Gerome
Charyn’s novel I am Abraham: A Novel of
Lincoln and the Civil War.
No comments:
Post a Comment