On (Not) Defending Historical Fiction
By Greer Macallister | September 2, 2019 |
Image by thecrypt
I had the pleasure of attending this year’s National Book Festival in Washington, DC, and as a historical novelist, of course I gravitated to the sessions on historical fiction. Hundreds of audience members flocked to hear perspectives from Philippa Gregory and Margaret George in one session and Roxana Robinson and Louis Bayard in another. Most of the readers attending appeared grateful and excited to be there. Their questions were respectful and gently curious: Can you tell us more about your writing process? What’s your perspective on LGBTQ characters in historical fiction? Have you heard from the scholars of the historical figure you wrote about? Do you do mostly primary or secondary research?
And then there was the other guy.
In his question (which he prefaced not as a question, but a “peeve”), he basically challenged the entire idea of historical fiction, saying that “having to wonder what’s real and what’s not” when reading historical fiction “interferes with [his] enjoyment as a reader.” Even when addressing the author who does not deviate from the historical record in any way, only adding dialogue and internal state of mind when fictionalizing the real people and events of her story, he still said, “Why not change the names? You basically made the whole thing up anyway!”
Had I been on stage, I would have responded with a possibly ungenerous answer: well, if you don’t like historical fiction, don’t read it. That’s what nonfiction is for.
But the authors on stage took his question seriously, and their answers were well thought-out. Louis Bayard pointed out that the idea of a single objective “truth” is kind of bunk anyway, and that Shakespeare paid little, if any, attention to the historical record when writing “Richard III.”
It remains an ongoing question in historical fiction — how much of historical fiction should be history and how much should be fiction? — and every author answers it in a different way. Personally, I regard the gaps in the historical record as an invitation, and I love that historical fiction gives us a deeper window into people’s humanity than most nonfiction can provide. As long as the author makes it clear, usually in an author’s note, where they’ve chosen to substantially diverge from what’s documented, I think it’s pretty much all fair game.
Because those documents themselves are often flawed. Scholarship is important and nonfiction biographies of important figures certainly have their place, but one of the most exciting trends in recent historical fiction offers the stories of women — Alva Vanderbilt, Natalia Pushkina, Alma Mahler — whose appearances in the historical record were shaped by misogynist, agenda-driven views of the time. History, after all, is written by someone. True objectivity is pretty hard to come by.
So in that way, telling the reader who doesn’t like to “wonder what’s real and what’s not” not to read fiction wouldn’t help him. History is full to bursting with things that aren’t “real.”
But in the grand scheme of things, if the fictional part of historical fiction isn’t your cup of tea, it’s a helpful reminder: not every book is for everyone! Some people just want to know what happened. Some people just want a good story. In my experience, most readers live in the vast, comfortable space between those two extremes.
Q: Do you read and enjoy historical fiction? Or do you prefer nonfiction accounts that stick closer to the historical record?
Raised in the Midwest, Greer Macallister earned her MFA in creative writing from American University. Her historical novels have been named Book of the Month, Indie Next, LibraryReads, Target Book Club, and Amazon Best Book of the Month picks and optioned for film and television. Her latest novel, The Thirteenth Husband, is inspired by Aimee Crocker, the Paris Hilton of the Gilded Age. Macallister also writes the ongoing Five Queendoms epic fantasy series as G.R. Macallister. A regular contributor to Writer Unboxed and the Chicago Review of Books, she lives with her family in Boston, MA. www.greermacallister.com
Interesting question, Greer. Your points are good ones: historical records are a product of their times and of author biases; the stories of women, lower classes, and poverty-stricken people are usually excluded; historical fiction by definition includes an element of fiction.
However, I do feel a responsibility to those who are no longer around to defend themselves. In Identity, Milan Kundera wrote about the way the reputations of people like Goethe were highjacked after their deaths.
I’m also concerned about the way the teaching of history has been downplayed in many schools in the rush to STEM and endless testing, leaving people to get their knowledge of history from docudramas and historical fiction.
Those are not reasons to do away with historical fiction, for all the good reasons you state. I do always appreciate an author’s note describing something of the research done (scope, sources for further reading, etc.) and any deviations from such records as exist.
Excellent blog! I love writing historical fiction and try to be meticulous about getting the facts straight before I weave a story around historical events. I am constantly amazed at how sloppy people are when they write short biographies of people in history. If you do a deep dive into the research you can see how one writer plays around with information in a secondary source, the next writer elaborates a little more, and the game of telephone begins. The next thing you know a myth has been created (and there it is on Wikipedia!) I try to dig until I get to primary sources, if possible – knowing that the original author has a personal bias and may not be reporting accurately. It’s a challenge, but I love every second of it! http://www.anneobriencarelli.com #skylarkandwallcreeper
I love reading (and writing) historical fiction — but I also totally understand where the question is coming from because I have wondered the same when reading historical fiction, even if I know everything is purely imagined within a given time period and with or without people who really lived. But to me, that is the real basis for historical (or any) fiction: to give readers — and writers — a chance to wonder, to imagine what really happened (as you say, there are almost always many ways of looking at things) and what might have been . . . taking ourselves to another time and place, either through creative nonfiction or fiction and perhaps making us curious . . . giving us the desire to find out more once piqued. I think that’s a very good thing. At least that’s how I would’ve answered the question.
Yes, I read historical fiction on occasion; I also sometimes watch movies and TV shows that are also historical fiction and raise similar questions. I enjoy fiction, but where accuracy is an issue, I like fiction to be accurate. That is, take inconsequential liberties for the sake of the narrative (with disclaimer) and explore possibilities where the record is incomplete or unreliable, but don’t risk causing real misunderstandings.
That being said, I have a defense for historical fiction; when we read non-fiction, or even do primary research, we automatically imagine things beyond the record. That’s what makes history interesting–imagining thoughts, feelings, experiences, and lives. We ALL create historical fiction, in other words, if we pay attention to history at all. Historical fiction novels not only enhance that process and make it more fun, but also they allow us to externalize the process and discuss issues like accuracy and bias. Purely personal historical daydreams, on the other hand, leave bias un-examined.
I write science-based fiction, which raises similar questions of accuracy. I maintain that sometimes speculation is MORE accurate than an absence of speculation. For example, we don’t know what color a long-extinct giraffe was, and any guess could well be wrong–but we know it had a color.
I appreciate that gentleman’s query. Short answer: While I understand authors must necessarily fictionalize how a conversation or event might have occurred, etc, I do expect an author of historical fiction to provide an author’s note giving me an idea of areas of significance where they took creative liberties in lieu of the facts.
Unlike many people, I love to read historical non-fiction and that’s the way I prefer to learn history (but you have to carefully screen even non-fiction writing–authors may be stating the facts, but depending on their agenda, they may be leaving out pertinent info). However, when I read historical fiction, I read it with the idea of seeing what day to day life was like in that period, how some of the issues of the times were faced, and as with any type of fiction, to escape.
As a writer, I feel an obligation to the people and events of history to be as accurate as possible and to never intentionally mislead. However I know I will ultimately miss some things. Researching and writing on a tight budget means some avenues of research simply aren’t going to be open to you. But I strive to be as accurate as possible in order to put the reader into that time and place and entertain them, and do make a note of where I had to take my own liberties for sake of story.
I enjoy reading both historical fiction and nonfiction. I write historical fiction. Fiction is by its very nature a product of the imagination and historical fiction seeks to plunge the reader into that other period of time, to make them feel as if they are there. I like the way James L. Nelson put it.
“The historian will tell you that Caesar traveled to Gaul. The novelist will tell you what he (most likely) ate, drank, thought and felt along the way.”
What a great discussion of historical fiction! I am preparing to launch such a narrative and have made pretty clear in my introduction what’s on record and what I’ve made up. I hope that satisfies my readers
I read that Japanese students were told about the atomic bomb – but their history texts did NOT mention Pearl Harbor.
There is huge bias everywhere – but authors of HF shouldn’t change recorded facts unless they are clearly doing alternate history.
It really yanks me out of a story if verisimilitude is suddenly destroyed because, say, Hitler’s invasion of Poland gets a different year.
I’m writing a novel set in 2005/2006 – and it’s hard enough! I don’t think I have the brainpower to do something harder and farther back. But, well done, HF can take you back to understand something you’ve always wondered about.
Speaking from the reader side of my head, the first consideration when reading historical fiction is whether or not the work in question succeeds as fiction. If it’s not an engaging, interesting story that draws me to keep reading, all the accuracy in the world doesn’t matter.
If a book passes that first test, then accuracy matters, but up to a point. I’ve read books where the author changed things. Sometimes the change is explained in an afterword — both what was done and why. In one case I can recall, the author made a small change, but she didn’t fudge the repercussions of that change, which I thought was really interesting. (I don’t remember the book’s title or its author; it was a long time ago.)
And even with reasonable accuracy, there’s interpretation. For example, when writing about Anne Boleyn, do you trust primary sources who clearly loathed her? Maybe, if you believe the dislike was warranted by her behavior. Or do you take everything that source says with a giant grain of salt, because you believe a significant proportion of what he reports is rumor he believed because of confirmation bias? Do you tell a story of a woman pursuing power in the only way she could, given the times, and whatever got in her way had to be defeated? Or do you tell a story of a woman doing the best for herself and her family in very trying and more or less impossible conditions? Same resources, same set of available facts: Two very different stories.
I tend not to read HF set in England during the period 1460-1603 because I have Very Strong Opinions about most of the players, and fiction that doesn’t align with those opinions is just annoying. I’m willing to explore other perspectives in non-fiction because of the distance in non-fiction; fiction is too intimate for, “Yeah, that’s not the way I see it.” The irony of this is that I write historical romance set in that period. Or maybe I write HR in that period because I know enough about it to have those Very Strong Opinions.
Or perhaps what I write is period-adjacent. It’s not entirely accurate — at the very least, I have people marrying for love, which is anachronistic. Beyond that, I strive for accuracy, especially looking to present the world as my characters would likely have seen it. To the best of my ability, I don’t present wholly modern Americans in French hoods and codpieces.
The other thing that makes my books period-adjacent is that they’re actually alternate history. They started as a thought experiment about what might have happened if Henry VIII’s brothers had lived. Given that, what else might have changed? (A lot, imo.) But I still tried to stay true to that world, even with my changes.
To sum up: As a writer, I see myself as a storyteller first and as a reader I look for story first. Historical accuracy matters but it’s secondary to story.
I agree with this article. Ten minutes of research online can usually answer my questions – which I always have. For me, the research is part of the fun. I LOVE accurate historical fiction that mainly just invents small things, but then I’m also currently watching and thoroughly enjoying Reign, where the standard rule is “it probably didn’t happen.” That’s why there’s the word “fiction” next to “historical.” The Shakespeare example is excellent.
I think historical fiction is some of the most entertaining writing round. I distinguish it, however, from fact-based narratives that takes imaginative liberties with unrecorded facts, like a character’s thoughts or fears or favorite dessert. Personalizing history engages readers like me, who might not read a purely nonfictional history about the Chicago World Fair or the hurricane that decimated Galveston in 1900 but find Erik Larsen’s story of the disaster (in Isaac’s Storm) riveting.
Interesting post and comments. I love historical fiction (and am writing in the genre too). I admire when authors weave stories about true events –and then explain what was real and what wasn’t. To me, it’s like putting clothing on a skeleton. The bones are there, but how I dress the skeleton is up to me. It’s late and my brain is done for the day…so I hope that analogy works!
Of course, you’ll want to dress the skeleton in historically accurate attire.
I once wrote an article for my blog about the thin line between too much history and too little history in historical fiction. I agree with your assessment wholeheartedly.
What about the historical dialect argument I get occasionally from readers? I write grimdark fantasy. I use vulgar language often just like Game of Thrones, but I still get the readers who say “That language was not used in those times, it pulls me out of the story” and I’m like “99% of our language was not recognizable in the middle ages. If you went in a time machine and talked to the people back then, you would not understand anything they were saying.” We use modern english, without saying things that are too modernish like “o.k.” so that people can read our stories without filtering through a middle age dialect that would be only readable by historical language experts. So, basically, we have to stray from absolute historical accuracy in order for a large audience to read our books. I just say it’s the modern interpretation of what was being said back then when a character calls someone a c*nt!
I love historical fiction but I do get turned off and DNF if:
1. Stilted conversations to explain everything about who’s who or what’s what in that era;
2. Newspaper headlines/stories used to fill up conversations
3. Character attitudes wildly out of sync with their supposed era
4. Names not even on the register of the SSA for that time period
5. Historical errors that should have been caught with a Google search
I absolutely LOVE historical fiction! I agree w/ the “ungenerous answer:” if you don’t like historical fiction, don’t read it.
as a non-writer i just want to say that but for historical fiction i would know zilch about world history. text books, with their dry-fact writing made me meshuge with boredom during school years! thanks to writers like the late irving stone, i was rescued from total ignorance about historical events. so, for folks like me, whatever it’s faults, historical fiction has a place in our educational world. also, curiosity aroused by such books often motivated me to check out the people and events in greater depth.