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How much of fiction is history?
Posted by Lale on 11/12/2001, 22:03:57
How much can you rely on history, geography, science, politics, nature, psycology, customs and traditions, economy etc. you obtain from fiction?
How much can you rely on your own background and intelligence to seperate historic or scientific fact from fiction in the novels you read?
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Posted by Michael Sympson on 12/12/2001, 6:12:46, in reply to "How much of fiction is history?"
Question 1: if you don't know it already - you will never really know. Besides, SHOULD we rely on fiction for information? I think not.
Question 2: I know what I know - so when I come across of fiction located in already familiar places, I can tell. If not, not.
But of course what Lale has in mind is the question of trust. However: Nature herself is an arch-cheat, deceiving us with all kinds of camouflage and manipulating our senses into believing to act on our own intentions, when actually it merely furthers Granny Nature's own purpose. (A person in love is an addict, (sort of); a human minding his business, even if his name happens to be Einstein, is just a vehicle for his genes. All the rest, seen from Natures point of view, is expendable.)
So, if fiction is playing Natures game of make belief, then, like Nature, it is in the business of cheating. For different reasons, but still. So, I have to ask again: do we really turn to fiction in order to acquire information? I don't think so.
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Posted by gerrit on 12/12/2001, 13:28:28, in reply to "How much of fiction is history?"
Inevitably there will always be some degree of fact in a work of fiction. The problem is can you determine which is which?
I remember that as a child it was very difficult to separate myth from reality because you have very limited background knowledge about the world. For all you know the world could be as flat as a pancake. In books for a younger audience it is always a very popular approach to suggest a hidden door to some unknown world, a mirror that you step through or a pit that you fall into. In the course of our lives we lose the ability to really believe in such portals. There is an element about books in general, be they fiction or otherwise that makes them somewhat unreliable when it comes to hard facts. You can't expect an author to keep every reader updated on necessary updates, so that any "fact" in a book will age year by year even if the author originally did his or her best to present reliable information. Of course in fiction you can expect the author to manipulate facts in a way that you can't detect if you don't know them already. I read a novel called Los Alamos recently and I have become a bit confused by it. It tells a story of espionage and romance against the background of building the first atomic bomb. The problem is that I have a lot of details in my head about this project that I can't really say are true or false. So a realistic background can be a mixed blessing.
Maybe I'll think some more about this.
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Posted by Lale on 13/12/2001, 10:59:21, in reply to "Re: How much of fiction is history?"
I bet in most countries (including United States) history text books followed in public schools are less accurate/complete than the period novels.
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Posted by Michael Sympson on 13/12/2001, 15:39:27, in reply to "Re: How much of fiction is history?"
Especially the United States! But that's not the point. By looking for fact in fiction you jinx your own attitude of expectations and miss out on the music (if there is any. Some fiction of course is so bad, that the facts it conveys, are its only redemption.) A critic who stalks a good author on his facts and has nothing better to do but to confirm that the author "got it right" (or wrong) instead of pointing out to the reader the coherence of the book's imaginative world which makes all the little touches and details falling into place as elements of comprehensive fiction - such critic better finds a job in the coal mines. It's the thing of copying from a score sheet the notes without giving a hoot for the music.
You may say that as a reader, one can have the best of both worlds - but I really doubt it. To state the obvious: would you trust your own grasp on English history with nothing but Shakespeare's dramas to back it up? No? Then why do we bother with Shakespeare? His Richard III is one of my favorites; a surreal tour de force. But as a character portrait of this enigmatic king it is just a piece of low hitting Tudor propaganda, and completely inaccurate, to put it mildly. Did this trouble Shakespeare? No. Does it trouble his readers? No. Is this the common perception of the real Richard III? Yes. Should it be? No.
Now, as an author it is easy to be smug and think of oneself as doing better than Shakespeare. Flaubert was one of the most thorough and systematic researchers - but should Salamb? in any way be trusted? The very moment you open one of Flaubert's primary sources you must say no - and not because Flaubert is unreliable as a researcher, but because his presentation of the factual is putting things together in a very strange way - as it should be in a work of imaginative literature. But don't even remotely believe that Flaubert's picture of antiquity has any thing to do with the real thing. With all his accuracy, he is not a dot better than Shakespeare.
I did history myself - first on Richellieu, I went back to his letters, the diaries of his secretaries, the correspondence of the royal court and of some of the affected grandees, Buckingham's speeches and correspondence, Wallenstein's campaign journals, the gazettes and bulletins of the period etc. Then I switched from French literature to archaeology, Roman law and history, I got my hands dirty on location and collected materials and sources on the 4th century. I think I am one of the few on the whole planet, who is thoroughly familiar with this period.
The thing is - as a conscientious historian you never consider to send the precious facts through the sausage machine of fiction, and as a creator of fiction you selectively fit in the facts that enhance the music. What the reader fails to notice is, that in the process, such facts lose their character as facts (which has something to do with context.) They have become catalysts and stimuli of an imaginative vision. And the author has a right to expect his reader paying attention first and foremost to his vision.
I recommend to read Oscar Wilde's "The Decay of Lying, a Protest." It may strike you as a satire - but he was dead serious and meant every word of it. Understanding Wilde's position, which in his typical manner comes as a paradox, really helps to draw the line. Ignoring it, means that in the end it is the reader who is losing out.
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Posted by Tim Stuart-Buttle on 18/12/2001, 16:12:12, in reply to "Re: How much of fiction is history?"
It is obvious that fact and fiction aren't the opposites they may first appear to be when thought is given to the question; that is to say that the two, in any novel, are often inescapably intertwined. Thus the reader faces two choices: either to research the sphere covered by the novel thoroughly to satisfy his own interest, or just to enjoy the book without worrying about the truth of it. After all, it is not the author's job to relay fact to the reader; rather to intrigue the reader with his reality, and the aspects of the world which are important to him. This is what makes literature so uniquely fascinating.
However often, once the reader knows the area covered by the author well, details which may be labelled "facts" osmosise from the text to the reader; details which may, by an ignorant reader, have gone unnoticed. In any case, how many real indisputable "facts" are there? Luckily not many, for if there were any kind of novel based on "reality" would be buried in dreary details.
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Posted by Michael Sympson on 18/12/2001, 19:08:51, in reply to "Re: How much of fiction is history?"
"After all, it is not the author's job to relay fact to the reader; rather to intrigue the reader with his reality, and the aspects of the world which are important to him." I am not sure I buy that. Basically this throws us back to the least important aspect of imaginative literature: opinion - even if it is the author's opinion. Music has one advantage over literature. The purpose of its medium cannot be misunderstood. But fiction is written in words from our every day language which serves us in so many different functions, that it is easy to overlook the music of imaginative literature, the composition and structure of recurring motifs, the integration of characters and incidents into a coherent world of its own.
So under this aspect "dreary details" are the very meat of the matter - even for a complete fairy tale setting. (And every great work of fiction - no matter how "realistic' its appearance, is first and foremost a fairy tale.) And once we talk details we also talk about things like plausibility and truth - within the boundary of the author's creation. But "opinions" and "great ideas" are hogwash - they are cheap, 6 billion people have a dozen each - they add nothing to the music, on the contrary, they deafen the reader's ear. To get my meaning, take 3 minutes time and read what I had recommended earlier on this page, under "touchstones."
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Posted by Lale on 18/12/2001, 20:26:09
Tim, welcome, very pleased to see you here.
I agree with the "intrique" point, I believe it is the main reason that attracts me to literature, or as you say "makes it uniquely fascinating" for me.
This is also the base for my "learning from fiction"; I read about a certain era or city or profession, and it intriques me enough to look it up in the encyclopedia, in non-fiction books or to follow it up with more fiction on the same topic. Or to go and visit the place. Ever since I read Crime and Punishment I've been wanting to visit St. Petersburg.
It must have happened to all of us. Haven't you read a book set in a certain city and wanted to see that city for yourself? Or read a book about a war and then ended up reading whatever you can find on that war? You learn things. It's inevitable. I understand Michael when he says "you shouldn't be reading fiction to learn". True, you should read it for the sheer pleasure of it but you can also learn and that can be an inseperable part of the pleasure.
One of my humble philosophies in life is that knowledge is a game of connecting the dots. There is a dot in the novel you are reading, then there is a dot in the tv documentary, and you connect the two together. Then in other books, movies, conversations, newspapers, crossword puzzles you see other dots, they all connect.
Going back to what Tim said, the more you acquire knowledge on a certain topic the more you enjoy the subtleties in a book on that topic. An example just sprang to my mind. I was reading Barbara Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible (first three quarters of it makes a great book, the last quarter I found was superflous), and in this book, at the very beginning, there this sentence:
"Why, Dr. Livingstone, I presume, wasn't he the rascal!"
Now, there is nothing to learn in this sentence. I already knew about Sir Henry Morton Stanley, his search for Dr. Livingstone and his famous greeting of the elusive explorer with "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?". I got the joke, I smiled and moved on. Had I not known this, I would have definitely looked up this Livingstone person to see why the author dropped his name in a book about Congo and would have ended up learning something. In fact, I owe everything I know about Congo to this book. Not because I took my "geography and history of Congo" lessons from this book, but because I was intrigued and looked them up. It might even be as simple as not shutting down the antennas the next time you hear the word Congo. You become more interested and open to the topic. Only if the author has managed to intrique you.
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Posted by Tim Stuart-Buttle on 19/12/2001, 18:08:41, in reply to "Re: How much of fiction is history?"
Aside from this interesting debate, I just wanted to give two recommendations if the Congo has interested you, as indeed it has fascinated me. Firstly, and you may well already have read it, is Conrad's "Heart of Darkness"; also, amazing from a more factual and historical approach, is Adam Hochschild's "King Leopold's Ghost", detailing how Belgium ravaged the Congo at the dawn of the 20th Century. Areas like this often don't require wild fiction to bring them to life and enrapture the reader- sometimes life really is wierder than fiction!
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Posted by Lale on 19/12/2001, 21:29:32, in reply to "Re: How much of fiction is history?"
I will most definitely get these two books. Conrad's book will be my first Conrad.
While reading Poisonwood Bible I couldn't put down the World Atlas. Just looking at the wiggly lines that contained the big letters, CONGO, was impressive enough. I would higly recommend Posionwood Bible, although everyone says that it is longer than it should be, and it is. What a shame when authors don't know when to stop. It is still a great book. (The story is happening during the Belgium years. Then the story ends, but the author wants to tell us about Lumumba and other important events, but she has no more plot to put in front of those backgrounds, so she keeps telling us about the afterlives of the characters.)
I seem to remember something about a movie in the works (or just out) about Lumumba. Do you know anything about a Lumumba movie? That would certainly interest me.
I am looking forward to reading your recommendations.
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