Constant Reader discussion

What is historical fiction? I always thought it was a fictionalized telling of an actual happening. Example: Passions of the Mind is historical fiction, but The Alienist is not. What do you think Constant Readers?

I ask because I was checking out Listopia and came across a list with a much broader definition of historical fiction then mine.
http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/15...

I think to be called historical fiction it has to have at least some emphasis on real events. Otherwise we'd have to call any book set in the past historical fiction. I mean, is Little Women historical fiction? Is Proust?

I agree that historical fiction needs to have some basis in fact - for instance, I just finished "Loving Frank" by Nancy Horan. Definitely historical fiction as it was based on real people and events but a lot of what happened in between was made up by the author

I stand corrected. Of course my two examples were the not the right ones. My slip. I also apologize if somehow you were offended. I had no intention of offending anyone, was merely trying to make my point. Summer asked for opinions, I gave mine. I'm sorry if it bothered you, it wasn't intentional.

Ruth -- your opinion that historical fiction must have some emphasis on reality seems valid to me. I also undersatnd you questions re Little Women and Prosut -- both of which are beloved works of mine as you well know. I didn't connect the questions raised on those as relating to the reference that historical fiction is work written about a period previous to the period in which the author is writing -- two different concepts there entriely, in my opinion.

Without historical content there is no historical element to a work of fiction thus no need for the adjective historical. It is about as easy as that. I see no way to define a work as historical fiction if it contains no real events, real people, real results of events as a part of the structure upon which the fiction is hung.

Period fiction with settings in a past timeframe are just that, fictions set in a "period" of time. They are not historical fiction. Again -- no history indicates nothing historical in the fiction.

That's a fine but very useful distinction, Dottie.

Summer, I agree with the position tht fiction simply set in another era should in a separate category from fiction which is based on real people and events from the past. As an example from the list you cite, "Dr. Strange and Mr. Norrell" would not qaulify as historical fiction but rather as period fiction (actually this slips over to fantasy, but that's another discussion), while "Lincoln, a Novel" would fit the historical fiction shelf.

There's nothing wrong with period fiction, and it certainly can shed a lot of light on the past, but it's not the same thing as historical fiction. And I'm not saying that historical fiction is somehow a superior category. I mean, "Forever Amber", however riveting it may be, isn't great literature. But it sure is historical fiction, being based on...real people.

Just one woman's opinion, here.

WR, please don't feel slighted by a difference of opinion. I'm sure each reader is entitled to his or her own opinion. There was a rather lively discussion about science fiction versus sci fi in another group. I like that the shelving options here are up to each user.

Dottie, that is along the lines of what I was thinking, except, of course, you articulated it much better than I did.

Thanks, Dottie. You explained my position much better than I did. And to further muddle the issue, my choice of examples was completely wrong. Don't know where my head was.

R

Well, this is an easy situation. WR was very apt in their answers.

The thing is before people jump in and disagree with someone's answer Dottie and Ruth, my dears...there is always Wikipedia hee hee!

Dottie, although you feel there has to be some association with actual facts...hmm...not always not so much. Ruth, it's not that the "emphasis" is on real events. Summer, actually The Alienist is a prime example of "historical fiction"..and it is a pretty broad genre.

As WR was saying, here is Wiki:

Historic fiction presents readers with a story that takes place during a notable period in history, and usually during a significant event in that period.

Historic fiction often presents actual events from the point of view of people living in that time period.

In some historical fiction, famous events appear from points of view not recorded in history, showing historical figures dealing with actual events while depicting them in a way that is not recorded in history. Other times, the historical event complements a story's narrative, occurring in the background while characters deal with events (personal or otherwise) wholly unrelated to recorded history. Sometimes, historical fiction can be for the most part true, but the names of people and places have been in some way altered.

A very good idea of for a question, Summer, and as much as we love to share our opinions, sometimes it is to be noted that literary definitions demand us more vigilant humbleness and to refer to a defintion easily avaialable from writers who study the craft, or a resource like wikipedia if we doubt our fellow CRs like poor WR!

Here is the Wiki page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historic...



All interesting things though...

Wiki -- dear RECENT internet all-knowing Wiki is user edited if I am not mistaken and therefore changes with the flow of thought of the moment SO I'm thinking my opinion is worth as much as any wiki editor out of the ether, sorry -- if a book carries HISTORY as part of its label then it d***** well IMO contain some solid bits of history in the tale not just as setting but as essential plot. Now Candy, you know me well enough to know I don't get riled easily but that was my initial and honest thought here. Hee-hee.

Also Ruth said and I quote and add my own emphasis to this statement regarding emphasis:
I think to be called historical fiction it has to have at least some emphasis on real events.

And as I love both historical fiction and period fiction, the distinction is important to me, WR, if to no one else, but as Candy and Summer said, it's a matter of opinions differing and please don't ever assume offense intended here. This is a pretty free-wheeling and broad-ranging group of book-loving folks and we love to argue the details.

In mid-January, I'm going to a literary seminar with some people who claim to write historical fiction:
http://keywestliteraryseminar.org/lit...

Here are some of the questions they are going to examine:

How do writers use imagination to understand the past, and how does that process help us see what is true in the present?
What does it mean to re-imagine or re-invent history?
Why would a writer bother? How do writers do it?
How do writers of historical fiction transform the past into a story which is alive in the present?
How do writers of historical fiction achieve authenticity? In voice? In character? In setting?
What is the nature of subjective truth? Can we ever really know what happened in the past?
What makes imaginative insight sometimes more compelling than literal truth? How do we know what is true?
What do historians think about historical fiction?
How do historians make the past come alive? How do they create literature?
And what is so compelling about the past that we as readers are so enthralled?

When I get back, I'll let you know what they think it is. Can you wait until February?

What a great seminar this should be, Sherry! I am looking forward to hearing about it.

Don't worry. I'll keep you posted (I'll probably take a picture or two as well).

It sounds like great fun.

That sounds really interesting, Sherry. I'll look forward to your reports.

You go to the most interesting seminars, Sherry, and I will look forward to hearing your info once you have attended this one!

I'm trying to read books by the people that will be in the session I'm attending (session 2). I don't know that that is necessary, but I'm sure it won't hurt.

Sherry that does sound like a great workshop!

Sorry to be so slow getting back to the comments here...on the road...

Well, Dottie, no historical fiction (which is a "dated" term now heh heh...due to postmodern approaches that history is a narrative art...see below) does not have to have any dependance on "real" or "actual" events. But hey...if that is your preference that is a difference thing. But nope, the genre doesn't have to have any basis in "realitity" or "real" events.

I think perhaps the idea of "history" and what is real is an important aspect of the original question. Because this opens up the idea that "what is history" "history is written by the winners"...and history is constantly being re-visited especially since multiculturalism...sexual and political changes in last half of last century. History is not the "reliable" source it used to be considered...especially if you are African American, or a female or a transgender or any other several minorities...who have been re-visiting history in the last 70 years.

WHICH...guess what? I happened to pick up a marvelous book at St. Marks Book Shop in NYC last week because it had an essay on Blood Meridian.

I had no idea it was going to be so perfectly relatable to this topic! What a coincidence!

The Back cover...

From The Civil War to the Apocalypse by Timothy Parrish

Why don't we read novels as if they were histories and histories as if they were novels? Recent postmodern theorists such as Hayden White and Linda Hutcheon have argued that since history is a narrative art, it must be understood as a form of narrative representation analogous to fiction. Yet, contrary to the fears of some historians, such arguments have not undermined the practice of history as a meaningful enterprise so much as they have highlighted the appeal history has as a narrative craft.

In addressing the postmodernist claim that history works no differently than fiction, Timothy Parrish rejects the implication that history is dead or hopelessly relativistic. Rather, he shows how the best postmodern novelists compel their readers to accept their narratives as true in the same way that historians expect their readers to accept their narratives as true. These novelists write history as a form of fiction.

If the great pre-modernist American historians are Frances Parkman, George Banecroft, and Henry Adams, who are the great modernist or postmodernist historians? In the twentieth century, Parrish aargues, the most powerful works of American history were written by William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Joan Didion and Cormac McCarthy. What survives a reading of these novels is the sense that writers otherwise identified multicultural or postmodern sharethe view that nothing matters more than history and what one believes its possibilities to be. In other words, Parrish concludes, history, not identity, is the ground of postmodern American fiction.

I am half way through this book and it is marvelous. I relly like how he talks about the books and he has included some of my most favourite books and writes enthusuastically (unfortunately, he has neglected William Burroughs, our other major historian...but many readers seem to forget or shuffle him off, nothing new there). Parrish's writing on Don DeLillo, Toni Morrison and Pynchon is really invigorating and I am enjoying this piece very much.

I am going to track down his work Walking Blues too...

Interesting discussion about historical fiction and history (I am bull-headedly old fashioned and, pace Mr. Parrish, drop the distinction between the two).

Most historical fiction that I have read (and I have not read Nancy Zaroulis) at least alludes to actual historical events and people. I would include "The Alienist" in this category. IIRC, Teddy Roosevelt appears as a minor character. I would also characterize Annie Dillard's "The Living" as historical fiction. I can't remember if any actual historical personages appear, but actual events -- largely economic crises -- have a great impact on the lives of her characters.

Based on my very limited reading (I dip into genres here & there and haven't read a good deal about any given period), I agree that often FICTION writers (I persist in the distinction! :-) ) can convey a far more REAL sense of the past to amateurs like myself than professional historians.

Mary Ellen

Well, Mary Ellen, that is kind of the point "that ficition writers can convery a far more real sense of thepast".

I am not too worried about the idea of fiction versus history.

I think what Parrish is really saying is the acknowledgement that history far often has been written by the "winners". History changes when we listen to all of the voices within a community. We can see this in family's suffering from abuse (one child claims sexual abuse, often the rest of the familybands together in denial) moving to american as great westward exapnsion is a heroism, a "good thing" and "manifest destiny"...not good if you're like me an rejector of totalitarian agriculture and /or a hunter gatherer! (then the history of North America is a tragedy and probably why I like Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee and Blood Meridian so much), Christian colonialism is not a great narrative if you are a female, or a Native aboriginal or an African citizen transported for slavery, the narrative of Charles Lindberg isn't quite so romantic to Jewish people...

Parrish suggests that an historian working at tenure in a University is a pawn of the Empire!

He is especially funny whenhe mentions David McCullough (John Adams. Now, I loved the HOBO series but I was constantly aware that this was one side of the story...one portrayal and had more in common with Thomas Kinkades version of Americana than just "truth".

The idea is that history is a form of narrative art...and fiction writers are excelling at the issues and stories of our times with more "truth" than "history books"...

I think perhaps the idea of "history" and what is real is an important aspect of the original question. Because this opens up the idea that "what is history" "history is written by the winners"...and history is constantly being re-visited especially since multiculturalism...sexual and political changes in last half of last century. History is not the "reliable" source it used to be considered...especially if you are African American, or a female or a transgender or any other several minorities...who have been re-visiting history in the last 70 years.

FIRST -- multiculturalism and sexual and political changes which occured AFTER any given hisotrical event are not likely to change that event no matter what spin one might wish to give it -- for example: slavery is wrong when it happened not because after the fact we gave the slaves their freedom and then far too long after that decided they could have equal rights which they should have had all along. But all of that is another thread entirely.

None of those things in the quote changes the fact that an event or a person or a group or a population which in fact existed and which in fact did such and such an act or lived in such and such a place or which moved from point A to point B using whatever means -- etc, etc, and so forth to quote Anna's King of Siam which I suppose Siam doesn't count as history since it no longer exists -- the POINT is not that there are viewpoints of history or "versions" of historical narratives -- the POINT is that there are events and people and these compose history no matter what "spin" the history may have been given by those who recorded it -- unless there is actual information on such -- then whatever is put out there is fiction -- most people who are writing about historical events so as to balance the info which was slanted in the original recording of the events are not writing fiction -- they are correcting the lopsided histories. FICTION is made up and if fiction is tacked on to history it is historical fiction. I'm not out to make up my own genre -- I'm saying there is a way to distinguish historical fiction.

I agree, Dottie.

Well, I'm not sure I follow you in regards to the book I was mentioning, but nonetheless, your comment was interesting to read Dottie.

I agree there is way to distinguish historical fiction and WR provided a very apt post on such a distinction.

I think perhaps you misunderstood the jacket notes as they say that history is a narrative art. That is the approach the author is proceeding from, whether one believes that history is a reliable science or a narrative revealing an agenda.

As for the way we perceive study and re-visit "history" ..maybe you are just feeling feisty and contraire...or maybe I was confusing by posting about this book on "fiction as a contemporary narrative/source for history"...but of course we have re-evaluated previous history books and my response to one particular history book might and likely will be quite different than a person from another lifestyle or economy. One of the quickest examples I can think of is Zinn's A People's History of the United States.

The point is EXACTLY that many history tomes were writing with a slant....were often not representing all of a communities perspectives. So it sounds like you might be arguing here...but you have basically rephrased what I posted with highlighting the Parrish book. Maybe you don't realize that you have just agreed with the book jacket notes and with my previous post?

( I happen to think that Parrish's nod to the emotional and spiritual truth in say, Morrison or McCarthy is a valuable insight to contemporary novels)

I am not disagreeing with you that there is a way to distinguish historical fiction but it's NOT limited on the genre having basis in facts or reality... Instead of continuing to say you'd like to believe that historical fiction is based in "truth" or "real" events (no it does not have to be...can you try to accept that?) .

In order to help you understand that the genre is NOT defined by being based on facts or reality or actual events, here are random sourced definitions...I hope this helps settle the matter for you:

Historical fiction is: -Stories which take place in a particular time period in the past. Often the basic setting is real, but the characters are fictional.

-fiction of any genre set in the past.

-This genre are stories set in the past and try to recreate the auro of a time past, reconstruct characters, events, movements, ways of life

-A book, poem, movie, or video game based on real historical events, but in which the characters are not real

-Stories which take place in a particular time period in the past. Often the basic setting is real, but the characters are fictional.l

-a long narrative of past events and characters, partly historical but largely imaginative, as The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

-Historical fiction is a sub-genre of fiction that often portrays alternate accounts or dramatization of historical figures or events.

Meanwhile...I'm taking it a step to the side and saying perhaps "historical fiction" is a redundant or passe term...?

But no big whoop, dear.

:)


http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History...

This is a case of those who still see black, white and grey refusing to allow the blurring between real and make-believe to enter the record as fact. It's as simple as that. If a tale is made-up it isn't going to be history in my mind nor in the minds of many others who know that "reality" can't be morphed into whatever form one might wish no matter what the strength of the wish. And all the spin and redefinition in the world will not mean that a book with no basis in fact (from any and all viewpoints) will ever make that book in any way "history".

What a world we are entering! Yuck -- where's my cave? Kidding to some degree but there's a large grain of truth in the joke.

We're good -- just can't agree on this one, Candy.

I just put that book on hold at the library, Ginnie. Thanks for letting us know about it.

Thanks, Ginnie -- and I think this quote which I lifted from a book review comment you made is relevant here as well. I forget who the quote is from, sorry.

"Because simply, we live in an age where a huge majority of the American public can no longer distinguish fact from fiction -- an age where over 50 percent of all Americans believe that The DaVinci Code is a true story, an age where over 50 percent of all Americans believe that The Secret is a true story."

This is what is bothering me about historical fiction defined as not necessarily having any link to real people or events. Huh? If not then why is it history remains my big question!?!

Thanks Ginnie, the book looks very interesting and it looks like it compliments the Parrish book I was talking about in this thread. I'll check it out, I'm off to the book store later this afternoon.

Dottie you're making me laugh because you keep agreeing with me.

As for the literary term "historical fiction"...

I suggest that literary terms are kinds of metaphors. I don't think you should lose sleep over the idea that it's name is not literal.

Attaching a kind of literalism to a literary term like "historical fiction" is going to give you a head ache.

You should hear some of the other terms that are used and those of us who have studied writing have to memorize them. Sheesh. Trying to incorporate a glossary of literary terms as common every day language isn't going to make sense. They are created for work discussions.

If you want to impose an every day kind of common sense to literary terms...well it's not going to make sense and it's not going to seem logical per se. Literary terms like..."faulty parallelism" or "periodic structure" or "negative capability" or "juvenalian satire"...

They are professional terms that in every day conversation depend upon a glossary definition outside the meaning of each word independantly. They are in some ways...a kind of writers and editors "slang" if you will. They belong to "shop talk".

I think we could also see if we looked at professional terms for science or even rock climbing terminology that these definitions do not always make sense to a person outside the profession.

They are coined among academics and practitioners and sometimes readers...but they often have metaphoric qualities and assuming the use of the word "historical" means the same in ordinary everyday speech as it does in professional shop talk is a mistake.

I suggest laughing it off Dottie and not losing sleep over a literary term too much. Yes, you've made your point that it may not be as literal as you'd like it to be...but it's not a conversational term...it's for editers and publishers and writers and book marketers...and librarians.

It's not a term for ordinary conversations, but a technical term.

Try reading a software engineers manual or terms!...it would be ludicrous for us all to be upset with their terms and try to make them literal like "confidence interval" or"fragile base class problems" or "specialization interface"...

These kinds of "glossary" terms are not meant to be read so literally. Historical fiction is a term meant as a metaphor and meant for use within a defined genre and practice. Just like any "workspeak" lingo...

Hi

I was watching the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer recently and saw Ray Suarez interview Tony Horwitz. His book, A Voyage Long and Strange, sounds very interesting! Has anyone here read Horwitz's book? Thoughts?

Thanks!

Renee

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/newshour_...
(Tuesday Aug 12 program)