In the latest issue of the Historical Novels Review, former lecturer in history Tristram Hunt is quoted as saying ‘there is a dangerous tendency among historians to slide into historical fiction, which must be avoided at all costs.’
He is said to be 'bored and appalled' by 'the relentless focus on detail which provides the authenticity.'
As a historian who also writes historical fiction, obviously I don’t agree with Dr Hunt’s proposed blanket ban on historians becoming novelists. But I do think he might have a point about the ‘relentless focus on detail.'
Long factual descriptions of what people wore, what they ate, how they furnished their rooms, do not on their own create a sense of time and place. Yes, the writer needs to know enough about these things to avoid glaring anachronisms, but most of them have no place in the novel.
In a contemporary novel, a writer would not devote paragraphs to describing how a character prepared breakfast, got dressed, travelled to work. So why do it in historical fiction?
If the hero, on his way to work, steps into the path of a hansom cab because he’s preoccupied by whatever predicament the author has placed him in, the reader wants to know how he reacts to the cabbie shouting and swearing at him, whether he feels shaken by his narrow escape as he continues his journey. The reader does not need a precise description of the cab that nearly ran our hero down.
Don’t describe in minute detail the home of a well to do tradesman. Show the girl whose job it is to clean the hearth and polish the pewter.
Don’t give a stitch by stitch description of the ball gown. Describe the seventeen year old girl who is dressing for her first ball.
Don’t write at length about how crowded, noisy and dirty London was in whatever era the story takes place. Show the reactions of the young woman from a provincial town who is experiencing it for the first time.
Fiction, of whatever genre, is, or should be, about the characters, the challenges they face, and how they deal with those challenges, not about the setting - unless, of course, the setting is the challenge.
Some historians overlook the people in their non-fiction work. They provide tables of population growth, of economic growth, of imports and exports. They write about great religious or political movements. They seem to forget that driving all these events are individuals, all with their own fears, secrets, ambitions and achievements.
They are the historians who should not be writing fiction.
Hmm, don’t entirely agree with you here. I think there’s a place for varying approaches; in particular, the target audience might be people who know nothing at all about the period, or might be people who have read the preceding twenty-one books in the series and might be expected to know it pretty well by now. Also, thinking about it, I actually like all that sort of detail!
ReplyDeleteFiction, of whatever genre, is, or should be, about the characters, the challenges they face, and how they deal with those challenges, not about the setting - unless, of course, the setting is the challenge.
Well yes, but sometimes the detail and setting are there to tell us about the character. I don’t subscribe to the view that Stieg Larsson spent far too much time telling us about Salander’s choices in IKEA - on the contrary, she is a person who would make a list and go through the place like that, and while I don’t know the IKEA catalogue intimately, stuff like Lack tables, for example, are very plain and cheap, as suits Lisbeth's personality and previous experience.
Don’t describe in minute detail the home of a well to do tradesman. Show the girl whose job it is to clean the hearth and polish the pewter.
This is fair comment, of course, but it must depend on the point of view. If your protagonist happens to be that well-to-do tradesman, then you have the choice of him looking round his house with pride, or perhaps his mother telling him how well he’s done. We can learn about him, or the man he thinks he should be, from the possessions he keeps on show.
Don’t give a stitch by stitch description of the ball gown. Describe the seventeen-year-old girl who is dressing for her first ball.
Again, pov. Although here you can perhaps choose between the proud wearer at her first ball - is she flamboyant, demure, rich, struggling to keep up appearances? - the seamstress offering options - anxious, confident, up-to-date, old-fashioned? - the friend telling her to treat it carefully because of the hours of work involved - envious, proud, nurturing - the admirer counting the pearl buttons or whatever - lascivious, possessive, generous. Or looking at it from below stairs, the seamstress again, the girl who has to iron it, the better-educated older sister who finds a new style in the London paper for her sisters to copy.
Personally, as I’ve said above, I enjoy reading lots of fine detail. And I think it can be used to great effect in characterisation, as well as in setting the scene.
As to your penultimate paragraph - I agree, and these are also the historians who should not be teaching, or setting school curricula. That style is how I was taught History at school, and that’s why I gave it up at the earliest possible opportunity (aged fourteen). But I was even then, and certainly am now, someone whose main leisure interest is History of one sort or another, and my interest was initially piqued by a detail in a novel.
I suppose I had been fed the standard line that the King’s oldest son is the next King, and then his oldest son, and so on ad infinitum, and I still remember my utter shock and puzzlement at reading that Henry VII’s Queen was the daughter of the King before last! One little detail, that had no particular relevance to the plot, leading on to a lifetime's interest in history.
But in all the examples you give, the focus is still on the character, not the furniture or the ball gown or whatever. As you say, the point is to shed light on the character, not the item being described.
ReplyDeleteWhat doesn't work for me, and what (I'm guessing) the historian quoted was complaining about, is the massive infodump which is solely about things, and does nothing to develop character or advance the plot or create a sense of time or place.
Or to put it another way, the type of writer complained of describes a room down to the last detail, then has the hero enter it. In the sort of example you give, the hero enters the room and the reader sees it for the first time through his eyes.
It's said that writers of fiction should always be aiming to engage the reader's emotions, and descriptions of furniture on their own don't do that.
I had some history teachers who possibly knew their stuff, but were no good at putting it across (or even keeping order, in one case.)
There has been a change in approaches to history teaching in the last generation or so, though - away from kings and queens and dates and politics towards economic and social history and how life was for ordinary people. Local history and even family history have become respectable!
Although there is still something to be said for a straight chronological approach, to provide a framework and to show how all our institutions developed.