The "language" debate -- again

Another bomb in the "language and authenticity war" has blown up in the blogosphere that caters to readers and writers of historical novels. Since I have one foot in that camp(and try to keep the "history" part at least reasonably accurate, and another foot in the "romantic science fiction" camp, I tend to follow such debates rather closely. And they do go on and on, seemingly forever But this one

One school of thought, and, contra the author of this particular blog, may be a minority, but it's certainly not slient. The followers of this school of though tend to be very vocal in insisting on usuing lots of "period" language, up to, and including, "old" place names, and deliberately "olde-tymey" langauage. Such usage isn't always appropriate; I recently tried to read a book set in Anglo-Saxon times which used this "olde-tymey" language, and it came out sounding like really bad imitation Shakespeare(and it wasn't meant to be funny, as the use of such language often is), but this author was dead serious.

In the case of the above author on the above blog, the person actually makes a case for this kind of writing. They admit, however, that one has to be careful about such language; there are words like "jet" and "go-cart", used for travel, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but 300-400 years later, they have quite a different meaning, and that is to be expected. Yet some readers reading the work where this kind of language is is used, claimed the usage was "too modern", even though the usage was authentic! Which is just one hazard in using "olde-tymey" words that are familiar to a modern reader.

But it's worse than that The author of this blog sets up a distinction betwee "writerly" and "readerly" books.. The former are somehow to be savoredfor their word usage and word play. The latter are "popular" -- the kind you would find in a drugstore or at an airport, which automatically implies, to the author, at least are forgettable things you usually just throw away. Many such books, whether historical novels, mysteries, thrillers, or something else, are basically "forgettable" in the way he describe. But not all. Because of this distinction, which is basically derived from earlier critics' dismissal of "genre" fiction, as opposed to a certan type of "literary fiction". The latter,is, in the minds of these sorts of critics, automatically "superior", the "only" kind of fiction anyone with a brain should read. In some circles, if you even admit that you like science fiction, or romances, or enjoy reading thrillers, no matter how silly the premise of any given thrilly, as opposed to, say, Jane Austen(no, I don't generally read literary fiction or Jane Austen; I just don't like either genre all that much, though some people are shocked, shocked when I tell them this) This author thinks "erudite" readers will "prefer" this kind of language-play and weird, or "olde-tymey" usages, place manes, etc. The blog entry also implies that readers and writers who "prefer" this kind of literature are somehow superior to those who want a good story. Whhich, IMO, is an incredibly snobbish way of looking at reading habits. My feeling is this: If you want "serious" stuff, get out a book on the history of any given period, read up as much as you can, while dipping into books written in your favorite time period or place. I also realize that what some historical fiction authors, in their heart of harts, really want to write a lightly fictionalized history text. And some readers like this, too, including, apparently, the author of the blog entry. There is nothing, per se, wrong with this, if you really do like this approach to historical fiction or any other genre. But it's not a matter of superior reading or writing habits v. inferior ones.It's a matter of individual taste. And it's not a matter of "good" or "bad", either/ there are, in general, no "good" or "bad" tastes in reading, or writing, just individual ones.

Which brings me to the blogger, and his "relationship" to Anya Seton's Katherine. For the blogger, Katherine basically falls into the "popular but forgettable" category. And the author goes after Katherine for what I think is one of the flimsiest of offenses, namely, what he considers to be "howlers", e.g., "mollycoddle", "chunky", and "scrawny", among other things. I don't know for sure about "chunky" and "scrawny" being used as words in the 15th century, but there are some who say they can make a claim for "mollycoddle". But, as the author of the bolg points out, most readers probably won't "notice" this. He does, because he says he cares; for him, the use of words like "mollycoddle" in the 14th century are just plain dealbraeakers. Fine, if that's what ye wants. But to argue against an author, and a book, which has been highly influential, often to readers and writers of historical fiction, in the nearly fifty years since it was first published, shows the blogger doesn't really really know, or care much about what many readers and writers like to read and write. Or if he does, he simply dismisses it. This is unfortunate. But perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Anya Seton was a woman, writing historical fiction at a time when most historical fiction writers were men, and those men may well have been jealous of her popularity upon writing Katherine.

I should also add that Katherine had a tremendous influence on me, personally. I first read it in my fifteenth summer, and I thought it was wonderful! I have reread it several times since then, and loved it, until the very last time, when it seemed a bit, um, "19050's-ish" to me. But in many ways, it was not only and enjoyable read, but in some ways, a highly influential one. Without having read Katherine the idea that I wanted to write a novel set in medieval England would probably never have occurred to me at all. Since I was also quit3e the science fiction reader at the time(and still am, to some extent), I never would have dreamed up the category "romantic science fiction" to characterize the "science" part of this historical fiction. Furthermore, I think I began learning a lot. I'd never heard of Katherine Swynford before, and ti made me want to learn a lot more about that, and the subsequent period that led to the Wars of the Roseses. I realize few readers would go this far, let alone end up doing some fairly serious historical research for the novel I"m writing now, but I"m hardly the only one so influenced. Katherine is hardly a "forgettable" book; it has sold steadily and appreciated by many since the day it was published. And I truly do not think one needs to be a snob about admitting this, whether reader or writer.

The bottom line here is, I really, really detest snobbish attitudes about anything at all. And when it comes to writers and writing, I practically hit the ceiling when I see evidence of this in writers or readers. Sorry, but I do. Such people may have cultivated "good taste", but they don't seem to realize that it is their tastes they are promoting. Which, in and of itself, is also not bad. If one, for instance likes books and movies with "weepy" endings, that's fine. I've seen at least one person who has explained why they do. And that is also fine. But they didn't attempt to impose their tastes on anybody else, nor did they consider themselves in any way "superior", though I still prefer "happy ever after", and that's the way I write mine.It is the assignation of certain kinds of literature that the truly "erudite" "should" enjoy, if they are truly "erudite", with its built-in attitudes, still sometimes filtered through departments of English in various colleges and universities, that does. I should add that though people who have gone through English majors, are exposed to a lot of "good stuff" , and this is sometimes visible in their writing efforts, most of these "English major survivors" are not snobs about their experiences, though their tastes in reading may be different from mine. In any case, it saddens me to see yet another opinion piece or blog space, still, in this day and age, expressing such opinions. But even then, I respect them, though I disagree.
Anne G

Introducing Clio's Children

I've gotten off to a late start blogging for the month of April. Part of the reason for this has been certain time constraints. But another reason has been that there hasn't been much going in in the subjects of this blog. At least not enough to excite me enough to write about them, though this is beginning to change. \


My purpose here, though, is to introduce the new blog Clio's Children,which is a group blog, devoted to historical fiction, which I was invited to join. I haven't posted anything -- yet. But I intend to as soon as the blog is better established. Those of you who are interested in historical fiction, may want to follow my musings there.
Anne G

Opinions, please, gentle readers!

On a writer’s site where I have a version of the first book in my trilogy uploaded(with great difficulty, I might add), I also do reviews and critiques of some people’s work.  I do a fair amount of reviewing sci-fi/fantasy, and some historical novels, since The Invaders is a hybrid – of sorts – or both genres. 

Which brings me to my dilemma, the one I want opinions about. I’ve noticed a tendency on the part of some writers of historical novels, to use “old” place names instead of their “modern” equivalents.  I can understand the reasoning behind this: in Anglo-Saxon times, for example, the city of York was called something like Eorferwic or Jorvik(by Viking-era Scandinavians who traded there).  The problem for me is, such usage may turn out to be very confusing for the average modern reader.  And yet some readers of historical novels actually prefer this.  Again, the reasoning behind this preference seems to be that it is more “authentic” to give the “old” place name, because that was what was used at the time, rather than the modern one, regardless of whatever confusion a reader may feel. I think, too, these writers(and a fair number of readers who may know more than “average” about whatever historical period the novel is set in), want what they feel is consistency here.  They don’t want what they feel are “modern” attitudes seeping into their novels, and if this means using “old” place names, so be it.

And I can understand that, too.  I used to read a lot of romance novels, and got rather disgusted with the historical ones, when the writers would use out-of-period, or obviously made-up names that no one in that period of time would ever have used, or had things like castles in the wrong places or times(I actually started critiquing a historical novel that was set in a time when there weren’t essentially, any castles.  This woman appears to have had serious problems, because she got all upset when I mentioned this to her, and I never did find anything out about her novel.  I suppose you can credit my anthropology background for some of this sensitivity; names tend to “belong with” periods and “ethnic” groups.  Names make the people of such ethnic groups and/or time periods instantly recognizable as who or what they are. 

I also understand that many writers think that their readers want easy-to-swallow history lessons, because they fear history is not taught in their schools or in their country, particularly well.  In this, they are right, but I’m not sure that this kind of attention to detail is going to “teach”  the reader anything he or she really wants to know. If they really want to  learn about “what really happened”, there are libraries, and the interested reader will probably be interested enough to get such details about the period, on their own.  I did much of my own research this way: I knew a little bit about Neandertals before I started writing(they existed in the past), and nothing at all about earlier medieval England, except a vague blur of events.  I had enough sense to want to get it “right”.  At the same time, though, I did not want to burden any potential readers with a lot of  facts; rather, I wanted to give a flavor of the times, as accurately as possible, while at the same time telling an interesting, and hopefully compelling, story.  I hope some  potential readers will be interested enough to do their own research, and if they’re really dedicated, write their own novels.  That, I think, is the best any writer, even of a “hybrid” genre like mine, can do.

Which brings me to my dilemma.  Well, I guess it isn’t really a dilemma, at least not for me.  I don’t use “old” place names; I think the extra possible authenticity(and I have come to the conclusion that authenticity is as much in the mind of the writer as it is “factual”) is negated by the possible confusion to the reader – even if that confusion is, to some extent mitigated by a glossary or end notes of some kind.  So I use modern place names.  I also avoid expressions like “ere”, “nay” “mayhap”, etc. like the plague.  For me, these particular words may well have been used in “olden” times, but the problem is, the people living in “olden” times, sounded just as modern, to themselves, as we do now.  I am fairly sure that at least some of those who could read, might have found “olden” language used in their time, stilted and unnatural. 

By the same token, then, I use what I call “modern standard” English for dialogue(indicating when people are speaking some other language when necessary). No, I don’t use slang, though I do try to add “flavor” by using expressions that were probably used in that time period. I realize a  number of writers, and readers, would disagree with me here.  I also know that some very fine writers, who have immersed themselves in a particular period, are happy to use a “flavor” of “olde-timey” language, just the way some writers use, or think they can use, “dialect”(the number of people who try to imitate Scots is really unbelievable, and they never get anywhere close to the real thing). Yes, this may be less “authentic” in some ways, but I think it’s more important to suggest authenticity in other ways.  A writer can, for example, flavor their character’s thoughts about things by, for example, contrasting the common way of thinking about, say, Native Americans, in the 18th century, with their own, if their own attitudes happen to be different for any reason(maybe they were brought up in Quaker households, for example).  They can describe clothing and buildings in some detail.  They can, without overpowering the reader, describe what kinds of medical treatments were available.  And so on.  The astute reader will ”get the picture” if they’re alert enough.  And as I said earlier, if they’re really interested, they might read more about the period and the people of that period, especially if information is abundant.

In other words, my primary concern is, telling an interesting story, while keeping any historical side as accurate as possible. I’m not here to give a history lessen, especially in view of the fact that what I’m writing is kind of a hybrid(I call it “romantic science fiction set in medieval England” for lack of any other way of describing it).  As there is also “prehistoric” detail involved(which is a whole other area of research), I’ve “flavored” the book with that as well. But again, my purpose isn’t, per se, to give a lecture no the course of human evolution. If people are sufficiently interested, they will also do research on this, for themselves.  Therefore, I’ am not so “historically obsessed” as some, but I’m not going to lie about anything that “happened”; I’m going to get as much “right” as

possible, but that simply weaves in and out of the story I’m telling. 

Which, when push comes to shove, I am inviting comment here.  What do you think?  How accurate do you need to be in a situation like mine. Remember, that although I’m writing what I call “romantic science fiction set in medieval England”, I am most definitely not writing a romance, although there are some perfectly delightful romance writers out there, who write in “historical time”. I’m must writing “my” story.  And I try to pay attention to the historical side, without letting it overwhelm me.  So I will part by once again asking, what do you guys out there think?

Anne G

Have you heard the one about the historian who no longer reads historical novels?

No, I didn't "hear" that one, I saw it, here!  In some ways, I can't blame her.  If you're a historian, I guess you're going to be able to pick out what you think are "anachronisms", "modern" thinking in historical times," etc., etc.  But when it comes to things like words for "mother", "father", "mama", papa", etc., what's going on here?  It's interesting that many languages have "pet" names for mothers and fathers and other close relatives, and a lot of them sound like "mama" and "papa",especially when coming out of young mouths.  But Magistra et Mater isn't a linguist, so presumably she wouldn't be aware of this. 

 

It seems to me that what she really wants, and what I've complained about elsewhere is "total" accuracy for whatever period she's reading about.  Even in periods where there's an abundant amount of material that can be mined as research, this simply cannot be done.  As for as "modern" attitudes go, well, I kind of wonder.  If, for example, my heroes had completely "early medieval" attitudes, they would probably be totally unsympathetic.  That doesn't mean I don't recognize that such attitudes existed, it just means that at least some of the people are exceptional in some ways(besides, it's "romantic science fiction set in medieval England", not a history treatise, nor a "pure" historical novel.  And it has "anthropological" material in it, or I wouldn't otherwise be writing about Dauarga/Neandertals as some of my central characters. 

 

The real problem here is, a kind of academic snobbery, not unlike some "literary critics" who moan about "popular" works like Twilight and  the Harry Potter series.  These people want "beautiful writing" about "character development", whereas many readers just want A Good Story.  This doesn't mean you should write sloppily or have inconsistencies in your story.  It just means that there are some things that are more important to a lot of people than they are to these literary snobs(there's no other word for them, in my opinion).  Historical novelists, however, do offer an opportunity for the reader to learn "more" about whatever period they are writing about, and it is not uncommon for people who read historical novels to later get into history majors, and become professionals, in some way or another.  Similar things have happened to some science fiction readers, who get into science that way. 

 

I think Magistra et Mater has fallen into the common trap of thinking that, since they have become "experts", they must find fault with anything written by a nonexpert.  Some fiction, like some historical films(such as Kingdom of Heaven and Braveheart in the movie realm, and things like The Da Vinci Code in the "literary" realm), richly deserves the opprobrium it is given.  These pieces are laughably inaccurate, as in Braveheart, and/or they have, as in the case of The Da Vinci Code, very obviously "mined" certain dubious source "works", which are themselves full of historical "junk".  However, the author apparently does not recognize that a historical novelist is not a historian, is not expected to be a historian, and shouldn't be held to the same standards as a historian, no matter how "representative" of a time or place any piece of historical fiction is supposed to be.  I've seen whines about this in anthropology journals(mainly about the Jean Auel's Children of Earth series.  There, the problem is, that the academics in question wish they were as famous, or had made as much money as Mrs. Auel, but they're academics, and aren't as famous as Jean Auel or her series.  It is quite possible to make legitimate criticisms of her series -- she has obviously done extensive research, but Ayla, her heroine, is too much of a prehistoric "everywoman" to be completely credible.  Yet, if she hadn't written Ayla this way, would anybody have eve read her books?  I don't have an answer to this, but novelists must make authorial decisions all the time about things like this, whether it's "accurate" or not.  On the other hand, I do think the novelist in question should research as thoroughly as they can, and work the "accurate" bits into the background.  It won't be "history", exactly, but it might inspire someone, some day, to research a period on their own or even(gasp!) to become a historian themselves.

Anne G

Woo-hoo! Some good library news for a change!

Some  good news has come out of the library rubble of woes lately.  Yesterday, when browsing one of my local branches, I found a copy of Elizabeth Chadwick's The Greatest Knight, her recent biographical fiction about William Marshal.  It's not that new, I guess, but it was recently reissued -- in the US -- in paperback, and our local system obtained a copy.  This, after I won the same paperback version, by writing a reply to a blog about it.  Haven't gotten around to reading it though.  So many books, so little time.  Anyway, it's not all gloom and doom there.

Anne G

The ultimate "accuracy obsessive"

Recently on a venue where people discuss historical mysteries, people got into a discussion about anachronisms in historical mysteries taking place in relatively recent times.  Somebody brought up a book they'd read, where the writer had the women wearing pantyhose back in the 1920s.  Nobody disagreed that this was anachronistic, even though women nowadays -- if they can possibly avoid it -- tend not to wear pantyhose at all(I know that in some work situations I had to wear pantyhose, and boy, even in a Seattle July or August, I hated them, and took them off as soon as I could after getting off work!).  Be that as it may, the anachronism here is this:  pantyhose weren't widely worn until the latter part of the 1960's.  I know, because I was one of the earlier adopters.  They were a lot more comfortable than girdles.  Before then, women generally wore girdles and garters to which they attached nylon hose.  These were uncomfortable in a different way, but women wore what they felt they had to wear, I guess.  So a woman wearing pantyhose in the 1920's would indeed be an anachronism, since pantyhose weren't yet invented.

 

Be that as it may,  and as is often the case in such discussions, it spawned another discussion about "anachronistic" language.  And this is where another "accuracy obsessive" person popped up their head.  It happened like this:  the person in question mentioned that they had tried to read Anya Seton's famous historical novel, Katherine, a story, more or less, about Katherine Swynford, who was an interesting personage living in the mid to late fourteenth century, and more or less important for who she married, and the descendants of that marriage(and other marriages of related people).  It seems that this person objected to the fact that Ms. Seton had someone (frankly, I can't remember who, at this point, it's been a long time since I read the book), uttering the word  "mollycoddle"  The poster said they were upset because "mollycoddle", they pointed out, was a nineteenth century word!  The result?  They put down Katherine and never finished it!

 

Here, I must , for the record, mention that I read Katherine for the first time, when I was fifteen. I loved it so much, that I think, even then, it gave me the germ of the desire to write a novel set in medieval England.  I didn't act on this desire for a long, long  time, and in the meantime, I reread Katherine several times, and still loved it.  The result, for me, at that time, was to get me reading all sorts of material about that period and some subsequent ones, and I kept on dreaming of writing a novel that romantic, set in medieval times.  The Gentle Reader of my blog may wonder why I didn't just start trying to write romances when those came on the scene.  I think that was because I loved science fiction even more.  It was only when I stumbled into the "modern human origins controversy", and decided that I had to write some work that would somehow make Neandertals respectable, that I finally found a way to combine the two genres, sort of, more or less, into my Great Medieval Science Fiction Masterpiece With Neandertals.  But it takes place in a far earlier time period than Katherine.  Still, the book was a tremendous influence at the time, at least in some ways, and I think it's doubtful that I would have even considered writing a Great Medieval Science Fiction Masterpiece With Neandertals, if it hadn't been for Anya Seton and Katherine. 

 

So, having digressed a bit,. I come back to the subject at hand, which was the person who objected to "mollycoddle".  At no time, including the last time I read Katherine,  and put it aside, because by then I found the heroine just too darn "1950's" for my tastes, though it is still a very good read, did I ever notice "mollycoddle".  I had no idea until yesterday or so, that it was a "nineteenth century" word.  And even if I did, it wouldn't have mattered very much.  It is a word that is "old-fashioned" enough to (kind of) fit with a medieval character, even  if the word wasn't actually in use in the fourteenth century.  And so I sent a rather sharp reply to this person, suggesting that such an attitude was, well, snobbish, even for an "accuracy obsessive".  I stand by this, by the way, but I think that the moderator was right that I was overly sharp with this person.  In a more recent post, this same person suggested that  no one who has ever been exposed to literary criticism, should ever read historical novels, because, in essence, they will always find fault with them. 

 

This is an attitude I find even more distressing, because it suggests that anyone who has ever gone through certain kinds of college training, will never be happy with anything that isn't "deep" or "serious" or "realistic".  To a certain extent, this attitude permeates a lot of  writing, even some "genre" writing, where some readers apparently "prefer" what they consider to be "realistically sad" endings(For those interested, I've commented on this elsewhere). 

 

But why do most people read historical novels, science fiction, or any other "genre" literature?  Even when "lit-crit" trained, my guess is, they don't read such literature to get all philosophical .  They want entertainment.  They want to be carried away to another situation(even if it is somewhat "realistic".  They mostly, I think, don't read to "lit-crit" something.  And that, to me, is the problem.  Some people seem to be carrying their academic or other training to the point where they can't just enjoy a story for whatever it is, rather than weigh it against some standards they have learned in some classroom.  Writers, from Homer on, probably all the way back to whoever composed Gilgamesh, composed, and continue to compose, their material, to engage and entertain their readers, even if whatever they are composing, has deep philosophical meaning, or many layers of literary meaning embedded in their story.  In other words, historical novels, and other novels, are written to be read, not "lit-critted".  For those who just can't stand an unimportant anachronism like "mollycoddle"(all right, I'll be careful not to use it in my own Great Medieval Science Fiction Masterpiece With Neandertals), I can only say that this is accuracy obsession carried way over the top, and is little more than, in my opinion, literary snobbery to boot. 

 

Sorry, but that's the way it is for me,

Anne G

I hate to sound like a broken record, but. . . .

The conversation on one of my e-mail lists, regarding historical accuracy in historical novels, sputters on from time to time.  It seems to be dying down for the moment, but something will cause it to flare up again.  I'm not out to change anyone's mind about how you balance "accuracy" with "story".  And quite frankly, I'm really glad I'm not a "straight" historical novelist.  I'm just not that obsessively detailed, I'm afraid, though when I have a historical setting, I feel it's necessary to keep that setting as reasonably accurate as possible. 

 

What prompted this blog was a discussion of use, not just of "olde tymey" language(much of which is kind of "fake" anyway), but attempts by some writers to add "authenticity" or "flavor" by using words and expressions common in whatever time period they're writing about.  You might be able to get away with this if you're writing, in English, about, say, medieval Russia.  A Russian writer might confuse his or her audience, though, because the meaning of words has a weasely way of changing over time.  This is true in all languages, not just Russian or English. And that brings me to the problem in using "period" language. 

 

On another e-mail list, one writer explained that they used the word "computer" in a seventeenth-century English setting.  It seems there was certainly a word "computer" then.  But "computer" in 17th century England didn't mean what it means today, although the meanings are related, in a way(this is almost always true of changes in the meanings of words).  Back then, a "computer" was a person that we would now refer to as an "accountant" or a "bookkeeper".  In other words, an actual, living person, not a machine.  The person's agent said that the writer should substitute some other word for "computer" in this context, because the "old" meaning would confuse a modern reader.  And the agent was right. 

 

I can understand the desire for writers of historical fiction to "get it right", often down to these last, rather minor-appearing details.  Sometimes, use of "period" language works, but as I've said elsewhere, that's relatively rare, and such language should be used with caution, for precisely the reasons I've shown in the "computer" example.  This is hardly the only kind of change the English language has seen: the word "booze" goes back at least to Elizabethan times, and it meant liquor(usually beer or ale) then, and it has a similar meaning now.  But has anybody ever heard of a "boozing ken"?  Probably not, unless they've invented a time machine and gone back to sixteenth-century London or some such.  We would now use the term "bar" or "tavern" for such a place.  Yet "boozing ken" is what people called places where they served drink and not much else, back then.  There were words like "punk", too.  But "punk" doesn't have the same meaning now as it did then.  If you don't clarify, or aren't willing to be fairly sparing of such usage, you do risk confusing readers. 

 

Some historical writers know, that a good percentage of their readers won't even care, and are just interested in a really good story(this is, by the way, one reason why I think "story" needs to come first).  This does not mean the writer should be careless; he or she can do the job of "instructing" as well as "entertaining" in their novel.  But there is another  subset of readers(and sometimes writers), who claim to know a particular period well, and tend to look through some  book more or less just to spot inaccuracies.  It is probably these folk the writers who use(or perhaps overuse) "period" language may be aiming to please.  Which, I think, is a hopeless task.  Because, as I said, the use of "period" language rarely works as intended, and more seriously, the writer, writing in the present, from the point of view of the present, isn't taking into consideration the ways in which language changes over time.  And if they don't, they risk losing readership, or at the very least, having a very narrow audience.  Maybe that's all some of them want.  I don't know.  But I think most of us, as writers, would like to have a broad, appreciative audience, and that sometimes means making compromises for comprehensibility.

 

'Nuff said,

Anne G

Still more thoughts on historical accuracy

The Historical Novel Society e-mail list has been having another discussion on "historical accuracy" in fiction.  It was generated by an article in Publisher's Weekly about an insistence  -- mostly in some recent films, for "authenticity", and an insistence by some viewers(of film) and some readers, on "absolutes" in "authenticity".  I can understand that many people who see a historical film or read a piece of historical fiction, want to have some idea about the times the stories being told.  But the author of the  Publisher's Weekly article seemed to think, as, to some extent, I do, that "story" was being sacrificed to "detail".  This is tricky.  Some authors can do this kind of thing very well, without sacrificing "story" at all.  But usually being bogged down in too much "detail" will turn a reader off(it's more problematic in films, which was one reason why some people who know the period, roundly criticized the film Kingdom of Heaven a few years back.  On the other hand, even if you don't know very much about the Third Crusade -- and I don't -- it sounded like an awful film just in terms of things like acting and storyline.  But that's another problem.  I'm talking about writing here.  The discussion at the Historical Novel Society e-mail list devolved into a discussion of how much period detail  certain authors put into their books.  One author proudly asserted that they were  so detail-oriented, that they were trying to find the brand name of some type of accordion that was manufactured in the early 20th century.  What?????  Would most readers of this story even care?  This seems to follow a trend found in certain fiction set in contemporary times, where the personalities of certain types of characters, especially if they are supposed to be monied and "refined"(whether they are or not), are associated with the brand names of certain products(e.g. Rolex watches, certain brands of whiskey, etc., etc.).  I don't know why the authors  of these books(usually thrillers or mysteries) are so fascinated by these brand names, but  naming the brands sometimes just annoys me. I"m reading one such book right now.  It's otherwise quite good, and I'll have to admit the brand names do add a certain "color" to the story being told. 

 

However, I think in historical fiction(or fiction of whatever genre, that uses a historical setting), this may be problematic.  In the first place, many readers may not even care about such fine detail, and won't even recall it if asked.  In the second place, if you go back far enough, you won't even find this kind of "branding"; it's a concept that took hold, basically within the last 150 years.  So if you're writing a novel set in ancient Greece, you're going to be out of luck, although if you're really interested in such fine detail, there is such an abundant literature, and so many sources, on ancient Greece, that you can certainly put in a lot of fine detail if that's what you desire to do. 

 

My own feeling on this is, that this kind of attention to historical detail may be more about what the author wants, than what the reader is interested. in.  In other words, if an author is obsessed with learning all he or she can about a particular historical period,  then every little detail will be important to them.  Sometimes this is good.  The trick, however, is to know where and when to stop.  Some kinds of details can be hinted at or implied.  In my own Invaders trilogy, the action really starts in a place called Boxgrove.  This Boxgrove is a real place, and existed at the time I'm writing about, but the significance of Boxgrove has more to do with early human history, at least in England, than any "historical" significance.  Yet it establishes certain things about the characters and their associations.  One of the characters mentions, in passing, that "archaic" humans once lived there.  This helps establish their own history, and also allows three of the important characters to meet(they end up going elsewhere, however).  This is an important detail.  Lovingly describing the style of a local church, for example, probably is not, though it might be if you were writing  something about cathedral-building. 

 

Still, I'm not sure that describing the brand of accordion somebody plays is necessarily the kind, or amount, of detail one would want to go into, even for a novel set somewhere, in the early part of the 20th  century.  It  just seems, well, kind of obsessive-compulsive to me.

 

On the other hand, there seem to be basically two camps of historical novel readers(and writers).  On the one hand, there are those who insist on as much "detail"(including things like the brand names of accordions), as possible, for the sake of authenticity.  These people tend to feel, although they might not put it this way, that accuracy almost trumps story, and that somehow, you must be "100% accurate" in telling your story, otherwise, you, the critic, will not read or believe it.  I am not talking here about obvious, egregious mistakes.  I'm talking about how "story" fits with "history" when telling a tale.  Some authors and readers insist on "no deviations whatever".  All I can say is, some rule that says "to write historical fiction, you must be 100 % true to the period and 100% accurate") "whatever "being true to the period" might mean), is as deadly to an aspiring writer, as  the advice "write what  you know", without qualifications, can be to many aspiring writers.  Because being "100% accurate" is an impossibility.  This is true even in periods when there is abundant source material.  It simply cannot be done, though it is quite possible to give an accurate flavor of any period, and at the same time put in some interesting, colorful, and accurate detail(but don't overwhelm the reader with it. 

 

The other side says, and I generally agree, that "story" comes first.  Because you can't have a historical novel or any other kind of novel, without "story".  This is what readers care about, even if they are very interested in a particular historical period and want to read everything written about it.  They will still be looking for a story.  If it's not there, they might as well read a nonfictional history.  However, this does not mean that a writer who is writing something set in a historical period should allow themselves to be careless, or not do any but the most superficial of research.  In this sense, accuracy is very, very important.  But a good writer knows, or learns, just how much detail to put in, and  how much to simply imply.    As for "being true to the period", I'm often puzzled by what this is supposed to mean.  It assumes there would have been "a" mindset in the past that was universal for that place and time, and anyone who thinks about this, knows this is simply not the case.  Again, this doesn't mean that people need to be presented as thinking "just like us" in some historical period, because people didn't.  Something like same sex marriage, for example, would have been simply unthinkable 100 years ago.  It wasn't even entirely "thinkable" ten years ago!  So it wouldn't do to have some happily married gay couple in the 19th century, although there were men who lived with men and women who lived with women, and probably people "knew" what they were in some sense.  They could get away with it as long as "they didn't do it in public and it didn't scare the horses", so to speak.  There are plenty of other examples like this, but there are also examples of things some historical novelists insist people didn't do at a particular period, which is one reason I'm so leery about people pontificating about "mindsets" or "being true to the period". 

 

In short, I think there are a lot of writers(and readers) who are attracted to historical fiction because they are very "detail oriented" in certain ways.  This is fine, and can be a very, very good thing, in the hands of writers who know what they are doing, and where to stop.  In other hands, it can become an "obsessive-compulsive" nightmare, and may turn off the very readers, or potential writers, that it's supposed to attract.

Anne G

More "accuracy" debates

Over the past few days, more debates on the "accuracy" problem have come up on various venues that deal with certain kinds of fiction, mainly historical fiction. One aspect of this debate has been blogged on here and has inspired a number of comments, including one from Yours Truly.  Another, on Susan Higginbotham's blog, deals with word usage in historical novels.  There seems to be a rather sharp division of opinion about how much "accuracy" should be in novels with a historical theme.  On the one hand, the husband of one of the bloggers, takes the position that "it's a novel", and therefore, the "accuracy" issue isn't as important to him as "a good story".  On the other end, there are extremists who insist that the writer must get every detail "absolutely right. I'm somewhere in the middle, I guess.  For me, "story comes first", especially in situations where, as in the time period I'm writing about, there is little information on some of the historical characters that appear in my Great Medieval Science Fiction Masterpiece, and in some cases,no one really knows what happened to them.  On the other hand, I try to be as accurate about what is known about them as I can, getting them in the right places at the right times, as far as is known.  And especially since I am not, and probably never will be, writing biographical fiction, I do feel I can "invent" certain things, either when little is known about a real person, or when I have my fictional characters react to a real situation.  Since some of them have "crash landed" but are on a mission from a nearby planet in the galaxy(and they look an act perfectly human, though they aren't exactly "modern" humans), they can and do have attitudes that are not of that time and place, though they try to adjust their actions to the realities of that time and place.  What I don't do, insofar as I can avoid it, is have the people who were born and raised in that era, act like "modern" people of the 21st century.  Their motivations and thoughts are quite different, in some ways, from ours.  This, I think, is a reasonable approach to historical fiction(or, in my case, a "hybrid" that hopefully will appeal to those who like science fiction and those who like historical fiction as well).  I don't think it's a reasonable approach to insist on "absolute accuracy" in situations where many of the characters, particularly the main ones, are inventions.  It's also one of the reasons why I'm not writing biographical fiction; I've seen the efforts of some writers who are trying to write this kind of fiction, and the results are, well,episodic. But again, for me, "story comes first".  But also, this is not an excuse for a writer not to do his or her research -- and BTW, this applies not just to historical fiction, but all fiction that has a "background" or "theme" of some kind.

 

Let me give an example of what I mean here.  I'm currently reading the mystery novelist Nevada Barr's Winter Study.  It takes place on Isle Royale National Park in winter, naturally.  Ms. Barr makes the conditions under which this ongoing study takes place abundantly clear.  The team studies the conditions under which the famous wolves that live in that park, and their prey, the abundant moose,exist in winter.  No visitors are allowed in the park after October(it's frightfully cold there in the wintertime (but wolves and moose have fur coats, at least).  It's just the researchers, the wolves, the moose, and whatever other critters live there in the wintertime.  She also mentions that this study has been going on for 50 years, and lots of people follow the ups and downs of the wolf and moose population.  She also mentions the canid specialist Rolf Peterson, and the "granddaddy" of this ongoing study, David Mech.  These are all real people, the study is real -- they even have a website(try Googling for Isle Royale National Park some time, and  you will probably come across it.  And Rolf Peterson wrote an Introduction to the book, which I will be reviewing when I finish reading it. 

 

Ms. Barr has quite clearly "done her homework", and it shows.  She also knows a good deal about how the National Park System works, and what she knows, figures into her mysteries, which make them very, very interesting, especially for me, because as I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm "into" wolves, and, by extension, "natural history" and environmental studies.  Though her situations are fictional, the background is quite real, and fairly easily verified. 

 

The same is true when writing historical fiction(or,for that matter, science fiction based on speculations derived from the study of molecular genetics, as the sci-fi writer Greg Bear has done).  It is imperative to get the basics right; if you don't, somebody  will notice, and complain!  Writers who don't get the basics right, often end up with glaring anachronisms or mistakes; I once read a very shoddily-researched romance(among other things, the names were all wrong for the period) that put a real historical person in the wrong part of England!  Ugh.  But that kind of egregious error is probably partly what prompted me to start writing this Great Medieval Science Fiction Masterpiece in the first place(plus making Neandertals respectable). 

 

On the other hand, some people can and do go way off the deep end, in the other direction.  I think I've mentioned elsewhere, that Sharon Kay Penman, good writer that she is, has a tendency to "write forsoothly", which often makes me grind my teeth, because,at least for me, "forsoothly" language is just too distracting. Which brings me to the subject of Susan Higginbotham's blog -- language use.  She, herself, prefers modern language, because she notes, quite correctly in my opinion, that use of some words and phrases commonly used in the time she's writing about, would be quite confusing to a modern reader.  One example she gives, is a historical character referring to his "mother-in-law".  "Mother-in-law" is clear enough to a modern reader; the trouble is, this term was used for stepmothers(and presumably stepfathers) in the 15th century.   So she has this historical character refer to his "stepmother" rather than his "mother-in-law".  She also mentions that she feels silly using words like "certes", which is something Ms. Penman does all the time.  In this case, it would make absolutely no difference for Ms. Penman to have her characters(even if they're talking in Old French or Middle English, to just say "certainly", or "for certain", as the situation demands.  There are plenty of other ways to suggest the time period(e.g. referring to certain kinds of armor as "hauberks"), or describing something about the living conditions.  She actually does a lot of this, and quite well, and I think that's enough.  But she, along with some other writers of historical fiction, tends to be what Nan Hawthorne refers to as an "accuracy nerd", and to me, at least, this is silly.

 

For me, the bottom line is:  strive for overall accuracy in at least the basics(timeline, organization of national parks, molecular genetic studies, etc), and, if you're writing historical fiction, be sure your characters are in the right place at the right time, and are in the proper relationship to one another(yes, I've seen a lot of egregious mistakes here, too).  Get the details right as best you can, and do your research! Beyond that, again, at least for me, "story comes first"; write the best way you know how. Don't strive for a "style" , but write clearly and interestingly.  If you can do this, there is no guarantee that you'll get published, but at least you have the satisfaction of knowing that you gave the best shot to your effort.

Anne G

A hearty welcome to a fellow blogger

A wonderful author not many have heard of, Helen Hollick, has entered the blogosphere. Her blog, Helen Hollick -- Historical Fiction and Adventure History has recently started, and not only am I introducing her here, but I am adding her to my Honorable Blogroll.  She is currently writing a series set in the Golden Age of Piracy, about pirates, naturally, but she has also written an Arthurian trilogy and is working on the third book of a trilogy set near "my" period(late Anglo-Saxon/early Anglo-Norman). Welcome!  I hope Ms. Hollick doesn't mind too much being sandwiched in between my thoughts on the writing process, Neandertals, and wolves, though!

Anne G

Dysfunction and mayhem -- medieval style(Book reviews)

Franklin, Ariana,

Grave Goods

G.P.Putnam's Sons, New York, 2009, 337 pp.

ISBN 978-0-399-15544-4

 

Penman, Sharon Kay

Devil's Brood

G.P.Putnam's Sons, New York, 2008, 736 pp.

ISBN 978--0-399-15526-0

 

Dysfunctional families often make interesting, and sometimes horridly fascinating, subjects for writers.  If they are spectacularly dysfunctional, and the writer knows what he or she is doing, these families can make for spectacularly interesting stories.  And few families were(or are) more spectacularly dysfunctional than the family of Henry II of England, who reigned from1154 until 1189. He married Eleanor of Aquitaine, something of a personality herself, and another subject that has caused novels of varying quality to be written.  And they had a lot of children, including four sons:  Henry, Geoffrey, Richard, and John.  All of them had "issues" with him, in part because, at least according to Sharon Kay Penman, he wouldn't give them the kind of responsibility they needed and deserved.  The youngest of the entire brood, John(who was later King John and was considered very bad, but probably wasn't quite as bad as some chroniclers painted him), got almost nothing, at least not until adulthood.  Richard was "the Lionhearted", and spent more of his time crusading than ruling England.  But Penman's story doesn't begin with Richard's crusading adventures,and neither does Franklin's.

 

If you like to read books -- any books -- about medieval times, both of these are very good, and very well written.  But they are quite different.  Grave Goods is a mystery, set around Glastonbury Abbey,where the supposed remains of King Arthur were discovered by monks there, in this period.  And the book is written around this discovery.  I should note to anyone interested, that it was at this time, when King Arthur's supposed remains were discovered by the monks of Glastonbury Abbey, that the "Arthurian cycle" really took off,and was apparently popular and well-known among all classes of people.  Needless to say, the "Arthurian cycle" has wielded tremendous influence among many in the English speaking world, from that day to this.  Ms. Franklin has taken these known facts, and woven a very satisfying mystery around it,involving an abbot and his mysterious and troubled past, a crazy woman innkeeper, a  possibly drunken monk, and a rather nasty woman who is trying to hang onto a manor she owns, rather than allow it to descend to the widow of her son, and their child. It is also part of an ongoing -- and in my opinion, very interesting series about an outsider -- Adelia, who isn't English, and has, furthermore, had a very odd, at least by medieval standards, upbringing.  She also has a very "nonstandard" relationship with a bishop, and they are frequently separated. The backstory is, that Henry II supposedly has her "on loan" from the king of Sicily,and she is always being sent out to try to find the truth of some event.  She is supposed to be good at this, because she is basically a forensic detective, in medieval terms, a "mistress of the art of death"(needless to say, an extremely odd occupation for a medieval English woman). Her interactions with Henry II don't dominate the book; they form a sort of background that drives the action.

 

Finally, Ms. Franklin -- refreshingly, I think -- has her characters speak in what I call "modern standard" English.  In the afterward, where she explains some of the historical background to her ongoing series, she has this to say:

 

I am occasionally criticized for letting my characters speak in modern language, but in twelfth-century England, the common spoke a form of English even less comprehensible than Chaucer's in the fourteenth; the nobility spoke Norman French, and the clergy spoke Latin.  Since people then sounded contemporary to one another, and since I hate the use of what I call "gadzooks" in historical novels to denote a past age,I insist on making those people sound modern to the reader.

 

Which brings me to Sharon Kay Penman's Devil's Brood.  But more on the "language issue", later. To begin with, there are large differences between the two books, though there appears to be plenty of "crossover".  People who like historical novels often like historical mysteries as well, particularly if they are set in roughly the same time period.  Second, Devil's Brood  at 736 pages, is somewhat over twice as long.  But then, Ms. Penman has a lot of ground to cover.  Basically, she is telling the story -- a continuation of the story of Henry II and his family started in earlier volumes -- of the "dysfunctional" aspect of his, and Eleanor's fractious brood. The oldest son, also Henry, sometimes called The Young King, since he was crowned king in his father's lifetime, is written as something of a lightweight. The elder Henry apparently gave him a title, but little in the way of real responsibility.  The second son, Geoffrey, marries the daughter of the Count of Brittany, and more or less inherits that title.  He does have responsibilities -- at least in Brittany, but is unsatisfied with those, so he leans toward the king of France and away from his father.  Then he rebels. As does younger brother Richard, eventually, partly because he thinks he should be ruler of Aquitaine(Mama Eleanor is all for that idea), and partly because his father ignores him, too.  The only one Papa Henry doesn't ignore is John, who starts out as a ten year old.  Unfortunately, when Henry does give John some responsibility -- to lead a campaign against the Irish, he makes a hash of it.  Meanwhile, Eleanor takes the side of the older sons, and is essentially put under house arrest for nineteen years, at various of Henry's castles, because she understands her sons' needs better than Henry does.  She is portrayed very sympathetically, which is another difference between Ms. Penman's and Ms. Franklin's books:  in all of the 'Adelia" series, she is a somewhat less sympathetic figure, but the author does suggest reasons for this. 

On the other hand, it's quite obvious Ms. Penman has "done her homework.  She is writing what is essentially fictional biography, and like many who write in this subgenre, she is careful of her facts to an almost "anal retentive" degree.  In many ways, this is good, because the reader can rely on a reasonable amount of veracity in what she writes.  I certainly got a very clear picture of what was going on,and yes, I ended up feeling kind of sorry for everybody involved.  The family was spectacularly dysfunctional, in a "larger than life" way.  And she writes very well; Penman's books are always easy, and to me, relatively enjoyable to read.

 

I say "relatively" enjoyable, because I do have some issues with the way Penman goes about constructing her books.  Before I go any further, let me state for the record, that I know she has legions of loyal fans, who like her style and like the fact that she is so careful in her research. I, too appreciate the fact that Penman has researched carefully and written her research into her books in an engaging way.  However, like many writers of biographical fiction, she seems excessively cautious about ''deviating", even for minor characters, from anything she sees as"historical".  Thus, she says in her Afterward, that she tries to use actual characters that she comes across, even if they are minor, or "walk-ons".  To me, it doesn't make much difference if you stick in an invented character in a novel like this, if it's a minor one, but then, she has(at least in her previous books) a relatively major "made up" character named Ranulf.  I have a feeling she didn't really know what to do with him after the first book in which she appeared, which was When Christ and His Saints Slept, a novel about the so-called Anarchy which immediately preceded the reign of Henry II.  A second problem is that, while Eleanor is portrayed with relative sympathy, there are other times when it appears Ms. Penman has distanced herself from everyone else. On some level, she seems to dislike both the oldest son, Henry, and Richard,the future "Lionhearted".  She does show some empathy, if that's the right word, with Geoffrey, the middle son.  Unfortunately, in history, the two older sons died, Henry of an apparent wound, and, it's claimed, Geoffrey died as a result of an injury incurred in a tournament(and tournaments were technically illegal at the time, because of the high rate of injury), so she has a "sort of" alternative explanation for what he was doing at the time.  This rather annoyed me at times, but I didn't stop reading; Penman is a strong enough writer to hold a reader's interest.

 

The other issue goes back to what Ariana Franklin calls "gadzooks" language.  Some people refer to this as "writing forsoothly".  I call it "fake poetic".  It's a kind of artificial "archaic" that is supposed to suggest an "olde-tymey" type of speech.  Ms. Penman spreads this on quite thick, and seems to be quite in love with usages like "upon"(rather than just plain "on"), "ere", "nay", "mayhap", and some others.  Unfortunately, this is exactly the kind of language that a lot of writers of historical romance use when they think they are conveying "olde-tymey" speech patters.  There are several problems with this kind of writing, especially in the context of truly medieval England.  First of all, the style is actually closer to that of the time of Shakespeare, than it is to the kind of English spoken at the time.  Second, it's also a type of usage that was picked up by some historical fiction writers in Victorian times, when this kind of language was thought to be a realistic reflection of whatever period the Victorian novelist was writing about.  And this "tradition" has never, unfortunately in my opinion, entirely died out. On the other hand,I've spoken with readers of historical fiction who really like this kind of fake "archaism", thinking, I suppose, that it lends an air of authenticity to the book.  I suppose this is the attitude of most of Penman's loyal fans.  All I can say is, there's no accounting for tastes.

 

A somewhat more minor issue is Penman's use of "Britishisms".  Which I think is odd, considering she's actually an American writer, living in New Jersey.  By "Britishism", I mean spellings of certain words, like "whilst" or "amongst", rather than "while" or "among", as is more usual with people on this side of the Pond.  For the record, I have no objection to these "Britishisms" as long as the writers actually are living in the United Kingdom.  On that side of the Pond, such usages(plus some other differences in spelling over which British and Americans will probably never agree). When American writers do this, I always wonder, why?  Interestingly, an increasing number of British historical writers, of whom Ariana Franklin is one, seem to be writing in a style that a few years ago would have been considered more "American", while still using "whilst", "amongst", and so on. 

 

But these quibbles will probably not be noticed by most of Penman's readership, and perhaps, even for me, they are more matters of taste than anything else. Both books are very fine reads, and for anyone who, like me, enjoys reading(and for me,writing), about some of the "larger than life" personalities of the Middle Ages, are two books well worth looking for, even if, as I had to do with the Penman book, you have to get it out of your local library.

Anne G

Flabbergasted

There's been a recent discussion going on at the Historical Novel Society e-mail list,which I frequent.  For anyone interested,it's at the Historical Novel Society e-mail list  The discussion started out with an observation that the famous archbishop Thomas Becket was found to be wearing a hair shirt and crawling with lice when he was murdered.  There was a general reaction of "eeeewwww", at least until someone knowledgeable about the period explained that some ecclesiastics of that period found it perfectly acceptable to engage in "self-mortification" ,the better, it was thought, to sanctify themselves.  Not everyone did this.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  Most people, contrary to one of the most persistent myths about the Middle Ages, at least attempted to keep themselves somewhat clean, even if this consisted mostly of washing their hands and faces with some regularity.  Alexander of Neckham noted, at about the same period, that there were a lot of bath houses in London, which should tell the astute investigator something about how people felt about these things. 

 

However, the following day, I came across another discussion, on the site of a romance reader's, and author's site that I have frequented from time to time. It was part of a  blog post called Where Have All the Medievals Gone?  The! blog itself was unexceptional; apparently a lot of publishers just didn't think "medieval romances" sold very well-- at least in the US. What flabbergasted me was the responses to the post. A lot of the responders -- romance readers every one -- apparently couldn't get past the idea that people in the Middle Ages "never or rarely bathed"!  They all admitted that they had "cleanliness" issues, but romances, after all, are basically a kind of fantasy, and the readers regularly suspend disbelief as they read them.  So why can't they suspend disbelief here? 

 

Well, for one thing, this "cleanliness fetish" seems to be a peculiarly American attitude, e.g., "cleanliness is next to Godliness", and probably goes back to (some of our) Puritan ancestors.  Now there's nothing wrong with keeping oneself reasonably well-groomed and cleaned up.  This is one reason why, I suspect, that Alexander Neckham, who was more or less contemporary with Thomas Becket, wrote that there were a lot of bath houses in the London of his day.  It's also obvious that the readers who have "eeewwww" reactions to "medieval romances", simply don't know this. And, to be absolutely fair,I should note two things:  first, many of the responders also said that they liked medieval-themed romances, and many of them listed books, like Anya Seton's classic Katherine which, while not strictly romances, are certainly medieval-themed. Second,to be fair, I don't bother with "medieval themed" romances any more, either.  Why?  Because the authors of these romances(as well as many authors of historical romances set in other periods),simply do not pay any attention to the actual way people of whatever time period they're writing about, actually acted and thought.  One dead giveaway, in my opinion, is the use of "out of period" names, usually the kind that would be found in some contemporary "baby name" book or the like, especially for the female characters.  Thus, too many of these fictional "medieval" heroines have names like "Tamora" or "Candace",which don't fit the period.  And while the men have "masculine sounding" names, they're not medieval by any stretch of the imagination.  Just this past Monday, I picked up a paperback whose title and author I can't remember,whose hero character had the given name "Wulfson".  This was supposed to be taking place in Anglo-Saxon times, and you'd better believe that no English male of that time and place would have had the given name Wulfson! He might be referred  to as something like Edmund Wulfson, if his father happened to be named Wulf(except that's not how men in those times were named), but a given name??  Ugh.  As far as I'm concerned, if the names are "out of period" just about everything else will be wrong, too. And I won't waste my money on anything like that.  But that's another story.

 

To get back to the subject, it seems to me that this peculiarly American attitude is partly predicated on the idea that things that aren't somehow "American-related" just aren't very important, interesting, or worthy of notice. It's not just that the readers who won't read "medieval-themed" romances are projecting their own quite modern -- and culture-specific attitudes onto a period they probably know about only through the medium of Hollywood -- but it extends much farther:  few of these "medieval" romances get published, because they are too far out of the "range" of many readers'  ability to conceive.  Romance readers, on the whole, tend to like the familiar and the predictable,and while people from the Middle Ages are recognizable in their quirks, their "context" often is not.  And romance readers(as a whole), don't like "alien".  There does seem to be an exception made for "paranormal" romances in which vampires, werewolves, witches,etc. appear in modern contexts, but the reader knows this is fantasy, yet the setting and the "mores" are probably reasonably familiar(you don't have to try to understand "alien" mindsets, among other things).  A lot of this distaste for medieval-themed romance also seems to stem from what I call a "Hollywoodized" version of medieval times that a lot of people seem to have in their heads. While I, personally, enjoy the "larger than life" quality inherent in certain historical personages of the time,  I don't have any illusions that they would have exactly thought, or had the same attitudes toward, a whole range of things.  Including the "cleanliness" idea. It seems, again via the knowledgeable author, that many people in that era made an effort to bathe and wash, because doing so was a sign of "good breeding".  And given the difficulty of getting together enough hot water to bathe with, it is easy to see why this kind of thinking existed, though there is evidence that even peasants tried to keep themselves as clean as they could, given their circumstances. But as some other posters in the Historical Novel Society list pointed out, part of these "insular" attitudes may be a function of faulty educational systems as well. Combined with the apparently "conventional" socialization,and "conventional" attitudes that many of these romance readers seem to have -- but again, I must emphasize, not all of them -- there seems to be little interest in exploring a world that is somewhat, but not completely "alien". 

 

Of course, I'm "prejudiced" here.  I was not brought up "conventionally", and for a female of my time, I had somewhat "unusual" tastes.  Practically from the "get-go" I liked science fiction, though I liked historical stuff, too.  Thanks to Anya Seton's Katherine, which I devoured as a teenager, I wanted, then and there, to write something set in medieval England.  And, also apparently unlike most romance readers, I haven't led a "conventional" life.  But that's another story.  The point is, I think, that to read anything "different", or perhaps anything at all,one must be "open"  to new vistas. And if some romance reader can't get past the fact that they didn't have hot and cold running water, and scented soaps, and toothpaste and dental floss, in the year 1150, then, in my opinion, they are not doing themselves any favor, in the romance, or any other genre.

Anne G

More "accuracy" musings

Nan Hawthorne has again brought up the problem of how "accurate" a historical novel must be, in order to be called a historical novel.  It's an interesting question.  She gives several examples, all of which she has read of novels that "change" historical events to greater or lesser degrees. 

 

I want to start this off,though, by sharing several things I've learned:  If someone reads a historical novel, and happens to be knowledgeable about the period the author is writing about, the reader is likely to notice even minor inaccuracies, be much more "critical", and in some cases, even reject the novel. 

 

Some readers claim to insist on "absolute accuracy". So do some writers, and this group tends to "prefer" either fictional biographies of the type written by Sharon Kay Penman(who is very good at what she does, BTW, but more details about her in another blog at another time).

 

A fair number of readers(and again, some writers) seem to like what I call "forsoothly" language to suggest a past time period.  One writer I recently read, calls this "gadzooks" language. These readers feel using this kind of "olde tymey" language is more "accurate". Usually this "olde tymey" language isn't anything near whatever the characters spoke in that period, and it's hard to do this well.  Most of the time, it's just plain annoying(at least to me), and it's probably better to use modern standard English(or modern standard of whatever language the writer is writing in).  By this, I don't mean slangy expressions, just plain standard formal English(or whatever)!  It's not as "accurate", but it may be less annoying to many readers. I should mention that one of the few times I've seen this use of "period" language done reasonably well was in the young adult novel Octavian Nothing.  But the author was replicating 18th century English, which, after all,is pretty close to our own. 

 

A fair number of writers, mostly of historical romances, fail to do proper research on the time period they're writing about, and this has tended to put historical romances in some disrepute.

 

Some writers(here Rite of Conquest, by Judith Tarr, comes to mind) take some "legendary" material and try to fit historical characters into this legendary material, giving them characters and motivations that as far as I can tell, they didn't have.  In the case of Rite of Conquest, it was um, an interesting read, but it sure wasn't history.  To be fair, I found this book in the sci-fi and fantasy section of a local bookstore, and the local libraries counted it as s-f/fantasy.  I guess you could call it "alternate history", another subgenre I generally don't like, but it is a genuine subgenre, and many readers like this kind of thing.

 

For the record, I have my opinions on this.  My Invaders trilogy -- I'm finishing the first draft of the last book, and writing the second draft of the first book -- is kind of a "hybrid".  It could be called a "historical novel"  because I've set it in historical time, and built it around actual historical events. A lot of the characters were real people, including one of the main characters: I've written this person as an "antihero", who wants to marry the principal female character,and who is decidedly fictional.  She is a Neandertal from a nearby "refuge" planet, but none of the real or fictional "earthly" characters are aware of this.  She and her companions have some, um, unusual abilities,as well.  This is pure fantasy, but in the heroine's case, I've tied it to a known medieval legend. I have also introduced  scientific and anthropological material, but, I hope, in such a way that the fictional and nonfictional medieval characters are not exactly aware of it.  For example, I describe DNA, but I give it another name, and again, the fictional and nonfictional medieval characters aren't exactly aware of it.  I try to stay "true" to the actual history, but I am not precisely writing a "historical novel". On the other hand, if someone picks up the book and reads it, my hope is that they will learn something about the period and events of that time, and, if interested, try to find out more.  So I try to stay accurate in that sense.

 

However, I know some writers are not so "accuracy obsessive"; Nan Hawthorne gives an example of a series where the hero of that series somehow is involved in and influences historical events. Is this going too far?  Well,I don't know. I suppose it would depend on how the series was written, and for whom.

 

I've also seen egregious errors like technologies that were not known at particular periods, or sacks of potatoes on Viking ships, or 15th century ladies drinking chocolate. I've seen even worse than that.  These authors just aren't thinking or they have become very,very careless in their writing.  I must say, however, that most writers trying to write historical novels, or novels of any genre, set in a historical period, at least try to be more careful than this.  Again, more on this in another blog. 

 

Finally, there is the whole question of whether or not the characters have the proper attitudes for their historical period.  This is really a very tricky question.  First of all, historians and historical writers, are writing about the past form their present. The attitudes of the historian's or historical writer's present cannot help but influence their writing, in my opinion. There is absolutely no way anyone can get away from that, though I think it is incumbent on  the writer(and here we are talking about historical writers), to try to be as objective as they can, and at least attempt to replicate the attitudes of the time they are writing about. will, once again, offer my own writing effort as an example. Illg(the heroine) does not have a "medieval mindset". She never entirely gets it, though she does adapt in certain ways, as do her "spacefaring" companions.  After all, their mission is to influence, but be inconspicuous about it.  However, the medievals, as far as I understand, and can get them to do so within the context of the story, have "medieval" mindsets.  However, I also bear in mind(as should any historical writer), that there were probably as many mindsets as there were people living in medieval times -- meaning that all people -- even the powerful -- didn't necessarily all "think the same" about any given subject.  Some historical novelists are incredibly obsessive about this, insisting that their characters would or wouldn't do things, based on the "mindset" of the period they're writing about.  And some book critics jump on the bandwagon.  I read a review, a few years ago, of the young people's book Sarah, Plain and Tall, where the critic claimed the heroine would simply not have done some of the things she is shown as doing.  Maybe she wouldn't have done these things in 19th century Boston, or even 19th century Seattle(if she was part of the "right" crowd in early Seattle), but on a farm in Iowa?  This, to me, is carrying the "mindset" idea way too far.

 

In the end, I think any historical fiction is going to end up being a blend of fiction and fact.  This is true even for fictional biographies, for often there are periods of the subject's life(even if that person is a very well-known historical character), that simply aren't available in the record, for one reason or another. So the author has to invent, often quite a lot. An author of historical fiction can invent, especially things like dialogue, and sometimes situations, and I think it's permissible in such cases, to rearrange minor historical sequences to get a better fictional "flow", or invent something plausible to fill in the gaps. if little is known about the character in question.  This, in my opinion, is not "going too far".  It is "going too far" to have characters meet who never met(if this is known), as per one of Ms. Hawthorne's examples, and have a grand romance. It is going too far to have characters acting in implausible ways for their time, place, and character.  But it is not "going too far", to write an enjoyable piece of fiction that weaves actual historical events into the lives of fictional people.  After all, isn't that fiction has always been about?
Anne G

Review: Nan Hawthorne, An Involuntary King

Hawthorne, Nan

An Involuntary King

Shield-Wall Books, Bothell WA, 629 pp.  2008

ISBN 978-1-4196-5669-9

 

An Involuntary King is an odd book. I don't mean this in the least unkindly.  By "odd", here, I mean that it doesn't fit easily into a category of books that many readers might be looking for. There is a reason for this:  Ms. Hawthorne frankly admits that it was generated by stories she and her friends told to each other during their teen years.  I remember doing this, mainly with science fiction, and the science fiction I tried to write was kind of "after the bomb" stuff.  I suppose it wasn't bad, and, had I developed it further, it might even have sold as science fiction.  There were several things against this, however, in my case.  First, I didn't really get much encouragement for anything I wrote(my mother, for example, wanted me to write "pretty"), there were few women writing science fiction at that time, and last but not least, I went to college and got "into" other things. 

 

Nan Hawthorne, on the other hand, retained an interest in her stories, and that was a good thing.  But before I go any further, I should warn the Gentle Reader:  This book is not for everyone.  Many readers of historical fiction, especially the kind who insist on "total accuracy" will not like the book.  Though it's set in a historical time and place, the names of the characters are recognizable as distinctly modern.  Again, this was Ms. Hawthorne's choice, and in this context, it works. There are also a large number of readers who think that the  concept of "alternative history" is way overdone.  I'm one of them. However, this doesn't mean that I never read "alternative histories"; it just means that most of them are not very good, and in this regard, Ms. Hawthorne's book is a definite exception. 

 

The book itself is set in eighth-century Anglo-Saxon England.  In this period, there were local kingdoms and shires, etc., but there wasn't an "England", let alone a "Great Britain" as we understand that part of the world today. So while there never was -- as far as anybody knows, a "Crislicland", or an "Affynshire", politically, the kingdoms and shires were often fluid enough so there could have been such places.  The story tells of a young man, Lawrence, who becomes king of Crislicland(which looks a lot like the northern part of Lincolnshire), due to the sudden death of his father. He is unprepared for this, and all sorts of complications, both emotional and political, ensue.  This makes for a long, complicated, yet  ultimately satisfying and believable story, and Nan Hawthorne has done an excellent job of putting all the complicated elements together in a way which should satisfy any reader who likes a good story, well-told, in any genre or hybrid of genres, that the storyteller chooses.  This book will probably make "history purist" readers cringe, and those who prefer "straight history" probably should go elsewhere.  But if you like a tale with lots of adventures, multilayered plots and plenty of action, An Involuntary King  is the book for you.  Ms. Hawthorne writes well, and it is an easy, and entertaining read.  Another plus: though the book doesn't exactly take place in "real" time, it certainly has a flavor of Anglo-Saxon England, and, to her credit, it is obvious that Ms. Hawthorne did her research well.  I should also add that she is writing a mystery series set in Anglo-Saxon Winchester, which I look forward to reading.  Based on what she has done so far, I don't think I will be disappointed, and I don't think anyone who reads this book will be disappointed, either.

Anne G

Those pesky little rivet counters

Nan Hawthorn's blog Booking the Middle Ages has an interesting post today. She is commenting about readers of historical fiction, who seem to live to tear apart a particular piece of literature, looking for inaccuracies in historical detail.  Sometimes this kind of pickiness can get downright silly.  She mentions that some people have jumped on her for using the word "tavern" to describe an establishment in Anglo-Saxon England, where liquor was served.  For the record, I, myself, wouldn't use "tavern" here.  In my own work, which takes place at a slightly later period, though still in early medieval England, I use "alehouse" or "inn".  I think this works better. But I am not going to criticize Ms. Hawthorne, or anybody else, for using "tavern" in this time and context.  I fully agree with her, when she describes these people as "rivet counters".  Her post is worth reading, because it does point to a problem I've had in online discussions with readers of historical fiction -- some of them are absolutely "accuracy obsessed" to a degree that really bothers me, and in ways that suggest that they may be people who want to learn about "history"; they seem to want a good story, but only if it conforms to their idea -- assuming they know something about the time period they're reading about -- of what that time period was "really" like.  This leads some of them into some of what I consider fairly serious misunderstandings of whatever period they're "into", and to me, this is far more serious than "rivet counting", which is just plain silly. 

 

I'm not talking about writers -- and I've read a fair number of these -- who write hastily, don't research their period very well, and insert gross inaccuracies that even I can spot.  Some of these writers, in certain venues, have been extremely popular.  I'm thinking particularly of certain romance writers who basically just use a historical period as "wallpaper", and don't care, and/or perhaps don't think their readers care, about whether or not what their characters are doing re that period, or they put historical characters in the wrong geographical place, or write completely inaccurate descriptions of the events they purport to describe.  I'm talking about readers who read historical novels and then get upset because the description of swordplay isn't quite right -- or something like that.  The reader who came up with that one is also a member of a well-known recreator's society.  This is all well and good, but the recreators themselves tend to be, as far as I can tell, a bit overly obsessive about certain sorts of "accuracy" themselves -- an "accuracy", which, BTW, may or may not be all that accurate.  And then there are those who absolutely insist that people of a given period "wouldn't" have acted the way some historical fiction writer describes them as acting.  These are the ones who prattle on about "mindsets".  Now it's true that most white people, 100 years ago, thought that black people were just somehow "naturally" inferior, and "couldn't" be "civilized", whatever that was supposed to mean.  But there were enough people(Mark Twain, oddly enough, was among them, as well as some other writers and musicians, who actually tried to soften their plights when they interacted with black people), to suggest that the common "mindset" of any given time wasn't necessarily universal. 

 

The same is most likely true of every single historical period anybody wants to write about.  Not everybody, IOW, was a conformist.  Attitudes in the earlier Middle Ages, for example, even among the nobility and aristocracy, varied, though perhaps within a narrower range than we would expect today.  So when I hear people talking about "the medieval mindset", for example, I tend to cringe.  It's also true that in the past, most people had a much narrower range of life choices  than they  do at the present time. they until recently, even in the "developed" world, this was true.   If you don't believe this, just ask any woman who is old enough to remember how feminism developed, or, it they're younger than about 50, ask them what their mother's lives were like, and you begin to get the picture.  I myself can remember a time when it was thought that any woman in science, for example, was somehow an exceptional anomaly.  I had a ninth grade science teacher who couldn't fathom Marie Curie!  I was puzzled, because my parents certainly could.  But back then, a lot of people couldn't fathom a woman scientist at all.  There was a "mindset" in the middle of the 20th century that assumed that women were "meant" to be housewives and mothers,. and not much else, but not everyone bought into this.  As I say, the same is true of just about any era.  And this is where true creative writing comes in.  If you don't assume a universal "mindset" for any era, but recognize that yes, you will encounter  differences from "today", there is plenty of room for creativity.  Of course, some historical novelists don't write like this.  And some historical readers prefer a narrower approach, which is why I am sure some of them may not care to read my work, when it's finally fit to publish.  That is fine. People who write, must write in the way that suits them best, and I am all for the encouragement of reading in any form.  But, puh-leaze. . . . just don't get "picky" about minor things, or things that, if you think about it, may not be accurate, only what you might imagine is accurate!

Anne G

Subjects medieval and Neandertalish

There's lots of bloggable stuff I've come across today, both on the "medieval" front and on the Neandertal front, so to speak. 

 

First, to the medieval:  Elizabeth Chadwick's blog Living the History has a rather long, but extremely interesting post about medieval horse types.  I knew  some of this before I read the post.  I knew the horse types -- destrier, palfrey, rouncy, were used for different purposes.  Destriers were specially-trained warhorses, and generally ridden only in battle(often not for long; most medieval battles (a) were or ended up being fought on foot and (b) a rider could get unhorsed.  If he got unhorsed, he was vulnerable).  These specially trained horses were quite valuable.  People of means also had palfreys, which were used for "ordinary" riding purposes.  Again, these were quite valuable.  Finally, there were rouncys or rounceys.  These horses were, "garden variety" so to speak -- a horse that would basically get you from Point A to Point B without being too "fancy".  Then there were also "sumpter" horses, that is pack animals.  According to Ms. Chadwick, you'd have to be pretty desperate in medieval terms, to end up riding one of these.  There was lots more detail and some nice illustrations, which I absorbed with great interest.  The reason for all of this is, that horses play a not inconsiderable role in my Great Medieval Science Fiction Masterpiece With Neandertal(because in my "universe" the tarpans -- the original wild horses of Eurasia, which were sometimes painted on cave walls -- were important to the Dauarga/Neandertal people on the planet they, and most of these tarpans had been taken to for a while.  In any case, it is interesting to note(and I have put this in the first book of this trilogy -- that the destriers of the period I'm writing about weren't these great big "draft" type horses you sometimes see in pictures.  They tended to be rather small, muscular, and fast, somewhat like the wild mustangs of the American west, Camargue horses, certain modern Spanish "breeds", and Appaloosas, either in size, or in general shape.  But a lot of the horses of this time were even smaller(that's where the tarpans com in) -- they were pony sized, that is, 13 hands or less.  Just FYI a "hand" is four inches.  Which makes one wonder about the size and weight of either the people or the horses.  In any case, I will give you another hint about my story:  there is a recognizably spotted "Appaloosa" type horse in it.  I chose Appaloosas as a model because in size and shape they seem to resemble the medieval types above.  Not that I know that much about horses.  Though I do  know a great deal about cats, and there is a cat that weaves in and out of my story, and she's a rather special cat.  That's all I'm going to say about cats at the moment, though.   Thanks, Elizabeth Chadwick!

 

On the Neandertal front, it seems that Greg Laden's Blog and the John Hawks Weblog are trumpeting the announcement from Svante Pääbo's genetics lab, that they have sequenced a complete Neandertal genome from someone who lived 38,000 years ago, in a cave near Vindija, Croatia.  Pääbo and his team have been pioneers in sequencing Neandertal genes, and they have made some quite interesting announcements about certain things, which have caused controversy.  And, for the record, people have interpreted all these announcements in various ways, according to their understanding of Neandertals and their lives.  Some of them have even attempted to spin elaborate tales from all of this -- and some of these tales are more believable than others.  As far as taking a "stand" on any of these issues, I have my opinions, but I don't see any point in reiterating them here.  They will become fairly obvious to anyone who reads my books -- I don't plan for all of them to be medieval-themed, though my present work is, of course.  But for now, I'm kept quite busy gathering information on both "fronts" as well as revising the first draft of my book, hopefully into a fashion that is publishable, and interesting.  In any case, the sequencing of the genome is quite exciting, though I will probably disagree with some of the conclusions.  Quite frankly, though there are some workers in paleoanthropology and prehistoric archaeology whose views re Neandertals come closer to mine than others, I don't entirely agree with any of them, which I think in the long run is a good idea.  After all, my story is unique in some ways(I don't claim it's completely unique, though).  One more interesting thing about this announcement:  The Pääbo people are planning to announce the "complete" Neandertal genome on the birthday of the most famous discoverer of the theory of evolution -- Charles Darwin. His birthday falls on February 12, which, for any American readers, is also the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, though that gets into a whole different story.

Anne G