By Bonnie Stanard
BruceHolsinger wrote, “If you choose to write historical fiction, you will
constantly be treading that fine line between the true and the plausible.” We discover what’s true (or at least verifiable) with research, and from that
we imagine what is plausible. We create scenes and give words and thoughts to
characters based on our research. Unlike other genres, ours deals with the
“burden of truth.” As long as we respect the truth, historical fiction has the
advantage of combining education with escapism. When done well, our novels help
us “see ourselves as historical creatures... shaped by large forces and
currents.”
A
contemporary market, driven more by a demand for fast-moving entertainment than
by a desire to learn, is having an impact on us. As Colson Whitehead said at
USC in Columbia when questioned about fabrications in The Underground Railroad, “It’s fiction!” Obviously fiction comes
first, but what is our relationship to the truth or at least the historic
record?
No reader is going to mistake us for historians (though
historians are suspected of fictions, but that’s another blog). We claim poetic
license for inaccuracies that range from trivial to profound. You don’t come away from
reading Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel or Shogun by James Clavel thinking
either writer’s historical exceptions jaded our view of a given person or time period.
Thomas Mallon claims to act within “the situational ethics of my
chosen genre” when he changed history to make Maj. Henry Rathbone complicit in
the assassination of President Lincoln (Henry
and Clara). And when he made Pat Nixon a fictional adulteress (Watergate). What do we think of this reader’s reaction to Mallon’s novel Finale: “I had a tough time separating fact from fiction on numerous occasions”?
(Amazon comments).
According to writer Helen Dunmore, novelists are “straying into
‘dangerous territory’ when they fictionalise the lives of real historical
figures. However, numerous 2018 novels feature well-known
historical persons, e.g., Sarah Grimke (Handful
by Sue M. Kidd); Anne Morrow (The
Aviator’s Wife by Melanis Benjamin); Jefferson Davis’ wife Varina (Varina by Charles Frazier) and Alva
Vanderbilt Belmont (A Well-Behaved Woman by
Therese Fowler).
Should we worry about reader reactions such as this: “[Einstein]
is portrayed as quite an ass!” and “[the novel] will change your opinion of
Albert Einstein forever”—Amazon comments on The Other Einstein by Marie
Benedict. Is it asking too much to expect readers to know which parts are pure invention,
which speculation, and which based on history?
Perhaps our equivocal perspectives are bringing about more
genre subcategories, such as alternate history; historical fantasy; Regency
romance; and speculative fiction. And there are more.
This
leads us to a question posed by Georg Lukacs: “How does a historical consciousness become embodied
in a work of art?” With respect to novels, is it by imitating recorded history? By challenging it?
By exploring it? Or as some of our writers are doing, by repudiating it?
1 comment:
I discovered from the biography Einstein by Walter Isaacson, how much of an asshole Einstein really was. Abandoning his family and first child. Lying about the wife who had helped him formulate his theories because she wasn't Jewish. The list goes on. I'm now more interested in his first wife, Mileva, than I am in Albert. That would make an interesting novel. With fiction, you could really go to town and play up his mendacity and lack of integrity.
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