Avi

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Are there only two kinds of fiction?

Con­sid­er these two items:

  1. I have been asked to do (and accept­ed) some lec­tur­ing at UCLA on the sub­ject of his­tor­i­cal fiction.
  2. Last week, when talk­ing to a fifth grade class, a boy asked me, “What was it like in the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry?  Did it have any influ­ence on your writing?”

WaverlyLet us con­sid­er the first item. Most lit­er­ary his­to­ri­ans con­sid­er Wal­ter Scott’s nov­el, Waver­ly, the begin­nings of Eng­lish lan­guage his­tor­i­cal fic­tion. Because he set his sto­ry six­ty-five years pri­or to his writ­ing, there is a canon­i­cal notion that six­ty-five years delin­eates “con­tem­po­rary fic­tion” from “his­tor­i­cal fic­tion.” Debat­able on all points, but these are use­ful mark­ers. I have always—after many tries—found Waver­ly unread­able, but I like it that the main rail­way sta­tion in Edin­burgh is named after the nov­el, one of the few his­tor­i­cal fic­tion facts I can men­tion in my lec­tures. The point is I am going to be hard pressed to talk about my writ­ing of his­tor­i­cal fic­tion in an aca­d­e­m­ic con­text. I do not know much about it, except that I do it. Yes, I read a lot of his­to­ry. I know how—being a for­mer research librarian—to do research, but in the main my approach to writ­ing his­tor­i­cal fic­tion is … I find a way to tell a good story.

Catch You Later, TraitorAnd indeed my forth­com­ing nov­el, Catch You Lat­er, Trai­tor, is based in large part on my mem­o­ries of that time. It takes place six­ty-four  years ago. Does that make it his­tor­i­cal fic­tion or con­tem­po­rary fiction?

Which brings me to the sec­ond item cit­ed above: My new nov­el will cer­tain­ly be his­tor­i­cal fic­tion for that young read­er, but not for my con­tem­po­raries who lived through the same peri­od. These days, most peo­ple know his­to­ry to the extent that they have lived it. We are not a his­tor­i­cal­ly-mind­ed soci­ety. Not only do most of us know lit­tle of his­to­ry, we have short memories.

As a result, I have a ten­den­cy to be dubi­ous about label­ing var­i­ous gen­res of fic­tion. I am remind­ed of some­thing one of my sons said to me when he was work­ing as a musi­cian.  “Dad, there are only two kinds of music. Good and bad.”

Con­cern­ing writ­ing, that works for me.

3 thoughts on “Are there only two kinds of fiction?”

  1. When I taught chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture, his­tor­i­cal fic­tion was always a tricky genre to dis­cuss. I worked with pre­ser­vice teach­ers and would often use the events of 9/11 to “push” their idea of his­to­ry. They remem­ber that day as “con­tem­po­rary” and the ele­men­tary stu­dents that they will be teach­ing will know it only as history. 

    Because of the way that the course was designed (and they ways that they will be asked to “use” lit­er­a­ture in class­rooms), it was nec­es­sary for us to have some sort of com­mon under­stand­ing of chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture. Stu­dents often want­ed for some sort of defin­i­tive “cut off” — e.g. if it’s more than 20 years old than it is historical.
    I even­tu­al­ly came to push them away from that and con­sid­er more deeply what and how the “his­tor­i­cal’ aspects of a book func­tioned in the sto­ry. If it takes place in 1965, what is impor­tant about that year that helps us under­stand the char­ac­ters or events? If the char­ac­ters in a book were actu­al peo­ple in his­to­ry, how do they help us under­stand the oth­er char­ac­ters? The plot? etc. 

    The more I think about it and as I write this, the more I think that the notion of his­to­ry as part of sto­ry is more about how it func­tions as a lit­er­ary ele­ment or device and less about defin­ing a genre.

    Reply
    • We were just dis­cussing this in my CL class today. I’m going to bring Avi’s blog post and your thoughts, Kristin, to my stu­dents on Thurs­day to add to our con­ver­sa­tion. Thanks for (vir­tu­al­ly) com­ing to class!

      Reply

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