LINES OF THE DAY

". . . But the past does not exist independently from the present. Indeed, the past is only past because there is a present, just as I can point to something over there only because I am here. But nothing is inherently over there or here. In that sense, the past has no content. The past -- or more accurately, pastness -- is a position. Thus, in no way can we identify the past as past." p. 15

". . . But we may want to keep in mind that deeds and words are not as distinguishable as often we presume. History does not belong only to its narrators, professional or amateur. While some of us debate what history is or was, others take it into their own hands." p. 153

Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995) by Michel-Rolph Trouillot

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Historical Research for Fiction vs. Historical Research for History

The two processes are very different, and now it strikes me as to why this is so.

What is included in fiction is entirely at the discretion of the author. This is the author's right and is part of the author's job to create the most immersive (if that's the author's objective) and coherent narrative she possibly can. This means picking and choosing the facts or even the rumors and downright lies that support the narrative's point.*

The historian should not, cannot, do that. The historian's job is to reveal to her greatest capacity what actually happened. No picking and choosing facts here. If the facts and the information do not support what the historian thought happened, no can do. At least in the world of ethical history writing.  This is one of the many reasons that slaveholding states denied access to historians and researchers for so long who were not 'the right sort.'  Denied the primary documentation many actions and behaviors can remain concealed forever, or at least poo-pooed as the fantasies of crackpots and pot stirrers.

Fortunately we are now keenly aware that generally histories are written from the point of view of the winners and is often employed to justify what the winners did to the losers. Etc. Or you can reverse it, how the losers write history to make themselves innocent victims. These can be filled with as many lies, counter-facts, myths and rumors as those written by the winners -- example: Woodrow Wilson's History of the American People.

Why yes, I have been reading William Byrd's journals.

And -- "Conditions will be very good for fishing!"
__________________________________

* Myself, I can only approve of very judicious mis-handling of the facts and information on hand, even in an historical fiction.  Equally for 'alternative history' -- such as all the alternate histories that show the confeds winning the Civil War, with the expectation of the winning confeds that slavery would somehow, some way, quietly, peacefully eventually wither away.  It had not withered in the least in over 3 hundred years, and it was never quiet.  Moreover, the  point of the war for them was to expand slavery throughout the nation and the continent(s), which the rest of the nation wasn't about to allow. 

For more of what this is about read Ta-Nehisi Coates' "Alternate History Cont." here as he deals with Hank Williams Jr.'s "If the South Had Won the War We'd Have It Made." 

zunguzungu goes much further with deconstructing this redneck anthem here with his blogpost "President of the Southern States."  zunguzungo, whether or not he realizes it, is performing Postmamboism, reading social, cultural and political history as embedded in music, i.e. musical forensics for history.

7 comments:

K. said...

My take on Gore Vidal is that he takes the essential truth of a historical event -- accepting the natural requirement to compress or otherwise change things for the sake of the narrative -- but presents it with a provocative slant. It's not quite contrarian, but I'd hardly call it alternate. He is very successful, IMHO, at getting the reader to think about a personage or event from a fresh, intelligent perspective that you don't get in standard histories.

Foxessa said...

C here -- The following is not written by me, but by someone responding to this entry who doesn't have a blogspot account, so could only send it to my e-mail. It is interesting and thought-provoking, so I'm c&ping it here:

Thank you for visiting and leaving a comment on my blog, The Romantic Armchair Traveller!

Conscientious historians may not cherry-pick facts, but do they not, like less ethical historians, select their subjects and present their findings with an eye to how it will impact their academic careers, for example? Is it not possible that this selectivity leads to a similarly biased narration of history through the accumulation of a body of work that constantly highlights certain pasts and ignores others?

For example, noted historian Anthony Beevor’s book about Stalingrad may be a landmark achievement in WWII research, but can you imagine him climbing to the heights of fame if he had chosen to apply his skill to, say, the annexation of Estonia during that same period? How many books on wartime Estonia are there compared to books on wartime Russia or Germany? And so, while “everybody” has heard of the heroism/sufferings of the beleaguered Russians at Stalingrad, fewer people are able to balance the perception this much-documented event fosters with an assessment of the simultaneous heroism/sufferings of the countries under attack by Russia.

Which is why your post suddenly inspired me to question whether a process that emphasizes the objective and dispassionate examination and analysis of facts is necessarily enough to cast research done by historians as, for example, less harmful or more useful or even (playing devil’s advocate here), in the big picture, more truthful, than that presented by conscientious historical novelists.

This past summer a brief article in the Guardian juxtaposed the comment by a historian that “historical fiction […] ‘contaminates historical understanding’” with the thoughts of novelist Andrea Levy:

"Andrea Levy, whose book The Long Song is set in Jamaica in the 1830s, talked about the almost complete absence of accounts of the period by enslaved people (though there are numerous "small volumes" by white visitors to the island “about these terrible, terrible Negro people"). “Fiction comes into its own in this type of story," she said; her novelist's imagination filling the blanks of history." http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/jun/01/fictionalising-historical-figures-hay-festival

Beevor is mentioned in that article, too ;-)

Thank you for putting my brain cells to work!


http://romanticarmchairtraveller.typepad.com

Foxessa said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Foxessa said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Foxessa said...

Not all historians are academics -- we aren't, for instance. Which is one of the reasons we have the Patrick Henry Fellowship prize for Writing the American Experience this year. The C.V. Starr Center wants to get away from what they call "the powdered wig" version of early American History.

I attempted to address historians' biases, conscious or otherwise, in the entry. First via our contemporary awareness that most history is written by the winner-conquerers, and second, history is also written by self-perceived victims, as with the Virginians all the time, and the former slaveholding states of the Confederacy all the time, as in President Wilson's A History of the American People. Though I didn't mention it, a classical example of history written in the hopes of telling what happened, without bias, were those by Emperor Claudius, before he became emperor.

This is why primary documents such as contracts, wills, marriage records, the records kept by navies and other military, so on and so forth, remain still the foundation of all history as reconstructed by ethical historians! Otherwise we are reduced to what is so evident these days -- students and politicians insisting that facts and correct information are only 'opinion' and thus don't matter.

We are living in an era in this nation, at least, in which re-writing history is going on every single moment by those who should know better, as only one arm of the many strategies and tactics deployed in the objective of removing forever any curb upon corporate power and destroying any progessive, social, public services sensibility. I've been watching this happen all my life, what I was taught in school was done only by the truly evil sorts, such as then still extant Soviet Union. Orwell's Big Lie was conscientiously taught to us everywhere -- in public school. As part of the strategies we've seen our nation's once great public school system systematically destroyed since the Civil Rights era -- which was yet another arena in which the nation's Civil War continued to be fought. The losers have been winning all along in terms of re-writing history.

Well, that's my opinion as one who is writing history anyway. At least for now!

I would love to have an opportunity to visit northeastern Poland, Estonia and Latvia. This is one of the (many) parts of the world where I've never even set foot once, and one I'd love to know better, for many, many reasons.

I'm so happy to have found your blog. Thank you for commenting! A really good historical novel is just about the only fiction I read these days.

Love, C.

Foxessa said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Foxessa said...

Vidal's not a writer of alternate history at all, as you say.

He doesn't change the outcomes. He goes into the spaces in-between, as with Burr, and devises a plausible scenario for what we don't know. David Stewart, for instance, whose historial investigation on Burr's western conspiracy comes out next fall, has a high regard for Burr.

Love, C.