Reading 1001 discussion

9. If you could ask the author a question, what would you ask? Have you read other books by the same author? If so how does this book compare. If not, does this book inspire you to read others?

Why choosing to situate Owen Brown and the action of communicating with Miss Mayo 20 years after his real death? I understand that it might have been more plausible than using a ghost emanating from personal documents, books, etc,, but still, it makes "historical fiction" more fiction than history...

There are a lot of errors of historical facts: the number of slaves in 1859 was four million, not three; Martin Van Buren did not establish the National Bank but helped to destroy it; John Brown was executed on December 2, 1859, not December 12; William Lloyd Garrison was not a Quaker; Franklin Sanborn could not have been an editor of The Atlantic Monthly in 1850 or 1851, because the magazine was founded in 1857; none of the federal troops in Kansas in 1856 were conscripts; Sharps rifles were manufactured by a private firm in Hartford, not by the government in Harpers Ferry; and Lewis Washington, one of the hostages captured by the Harpers Ferry raiders, was a collateral rather than a direct descendant of George Washington. Finally, Owen repeatedly refers to Oswald Garrison Villard, for whom this "Secret History" of John Brown is intended, as "Professor Villard" of Columbia University. Villard was a journalist, and a proprietor and an editor of The Nation and The New York Evening Post, but never a professor at Columbia or any other university.
Why would you write a novel of fiction which is suppose to help understand an event from history and have errors of historical nature?

With regard to Eadie's point maybe the inaccuracies are to remind readers it is a fiction and to encourage readers to explore the events described by using multiple sources to gain a better understanding.

Book wrote: "With regard to Eadie's point maybe the inaccuracies are to remind readers it is a fiction and to encourage readers to explore the events described by using multiple sources to gain a better underst..."

I can't buy that - too many of those errors are too subtle for the average reader to notice, thus the point would be lost. McPherson thinks it is just sloppiness. And I agree with that.

My question: While your explanation for Owen Brown's transformation into a fearsome killer is very modern and trendy, it is completely false - as others have noted, Lymann Epps sang at John Brown's funeral. So what was the real factor leading to Owen Brown's transformation? Was it in fact something within Owen Brown, or was he in fact a creature of his father?

All very interesting, why would you write such gross errors? I guess that would be my question, why, why did you create these characters this way.

I agree with Kristel, the motivation for writing the story the way it is, is not obvious. I would also ask why he made Owen so long-winded, especially about his relationship with his father. It was a case of tell, not show. He went over the same ground too many times.