Fiddlers & Whores

[kindermord]

Unlike Uber, Xaosseed & the rest of the gang over at blogcoven.com, I rarely update my blog. Mainly, I suppose, because those of you who might be interested in the mundane details of my life already live with me and because I'm an obsessive monomaniac who takes little notice of the world outside his sphere of interest

Comments

[colm_l]

I think you're completely right.

However, a novelist should always enable suspension of disbelief - if a reader knows a fair amount more about a given historical era & the novelist is clearly just making things up - it can ruin the story (ie. medievil peasants talking about how they'd love to go to America, the land of the free).

On the other hand, nobody really minds small historical inaccuracies and anachronisms as long as they serve the story well (incorrect use of "parry" is a good example).

[older_than_time]

Should historical novelists live down to their peers' standards and run, not walk, to the bank?
Is there a tacit contract between a writer of historical fiction and their readers that "historical" is not just a label to help reviewers?
Is it the same in any genre fiction - do science fiction writers have a duty to get the science right?

Here's one for you: do historians have a duty to educate? Should they allow themselves to be driven by the same narrative impulses as a novelist?

[kindermord]

*grin*

You're saying the historian is the honest whore? And the novelist the diseased one?

Uber, you say the sweetest things.

[kindermord]

We might justifiably consider said Mr. Brown to be some sort of plague-ridden, bepoxed penny harlot from the rat-infested docksides of the Thames. If a client catches Mummy Crotch Rot, is Brown completely blameless?

Mr. Brown can justifiably be liked to the penny harlot. But he's a penny harlot not because he takes the facts for a walk in the legitimate pursuit of entertainment, but because he does so and then in the introduction claims that it's all absolutely true. It is at that point he becomes a liar and worthy of scorn.

To advance the analogy, but change it a little. Let us suppose that authors are whores and historians are the nice girls who don't go past first base.
The reader/client knows he's going to a novelist/prostitute and should therefore use protection/maintain a critical faculty.

People do, despite better judgement, believe authors, and lies are lies whether or not you dress it up with sweet words.

Are you a poorer or diminished person for having seen Richard III or Macbeth for that matter?

[kindermord]

Should historical novelists live down to their peers' standards and run, not walk, to the bank

[uomouniversale]

The story is all that matters; writers who become bogged down in details loose sight of this, and either need a good editor or to reconsider their attempted career move. I've not much experience with historical fiction, but a bugbear I have with sci-fi/fantasy genre is the number of authors who think that a knowledge of some aspect of physics or even carpentry qualifies them as a good writer.