| 1 | 1 | | Once upon a time historians took historical novels seriously enough to review them |
| 2 | | in the American Historical Review and discuss the genre earnestly in essays. But for some |
| 3 | | time relations have cooled a good deal between historical novelists and historians. |
| 4 | | Narrative history has been in a long, slow decline for most of this century. American |
| 5 | | historians have become far more interested in economics and ideologies - and lately, in |
| 6 | | statistics - often taken straight, thank you, in large indigestible doses. As analysis became |
| 7 | | more important than literary style, issues more important than the people grappling with |
| 8 | | them, the profession began to ignore the historical novel. In the rare instances where |
| 9 | | historians have reviewed one, they have revealed an almost total lack of comprehension |
| 10 | | of the historical novel's role. |
| 2 | 11 | | Complicating the problem has been the low esteem in which the historical novel |
| 12 | | has long been held by literary critics. The genre has been too often dismissed for its |
| 13 | | supposed impurity and vulgarity. Irked by its popularity for a century and a half, critics |
| 14 | | maliciously have taken the most mediocre historical novels as representative. Thus, if one |
| 15 | | dares to define the critics' objections, the historical novel became identified with heaving |
| 16 | | bosoms, derring-do on land and sea, and history that was pure papier-mâché, In fact, few |
| 17 | | of these characteristics are visible in our best historical novels. |
| 3 | 18 | | The great public, when it reads history at all, takes it in the painless form of the |
| 19 | | historical novel. Its blending of fact and fiction is precisely what makes it valuable. In the |
| 20 | | historical novel the gifted, imaginative writer is able to enhance his fiction by uniting it |
| 21 | | with a version of the past that embodies a vision of America, an interpretation of our |
| 22 | | experience that has relevance for our own time. This, and not its utilitarian function of |
| 23 | | informing the reader about America's past, is what makes the historical novel important. |
| 4 | 24 | | We have been told that history tells us what happened and the historical novel tells |
| 25 | | us how it felt. Nonsense. Every good narrative historian strives to combine feeling and |
| 26 | | fact. When 1 wrote 1776: Year of Illusions (1975), 1 spent hours devouring biographies and |
| 27 | | diaries because 1 was convinced the perception of the American Revolution - on both |
| 28 | | sides - was crucial to understanding it. Both sides were gripped by illusions - that British |
| 29 | | soldiers were cowardly mercenaries who would not fight, that the Americans were |
| 30 | | nothing but a continental-sized mob who would disperse at a single volley. |
| 5 | 31 | | We have been told that history gives us the big picture and the historical novel |
| 32 | | focuses on individuals - another misstatement. The big picture is composed of many |
| 33 | | smaller pictures of individuals in action, and if the narrative historian does not exercise |
| 34 | | some principle of selection - does not shape his narrative around an idea and |
| 35 | | representative individuals - the result is a mishmash. |
| 6 | 36 | | The best historical novels, it seems to me, are those that operate in a zone of |
| 37 | | probable fact, to which the historical evidence, the letters and diaries and memoirs and |
| 38 | | battle reports do not extend. 1 see no purpose in writing a historical novel about a |
| 39 | | famous person, such as Washington or Lincoln. We know so much about these people |
| 40 | | there is no room for the historical imagination to operate. The novelist is reduced either |
| 41 | | to recycling historical fact with the trite claim that it is 'true', or yielding to the |
| 42 | | temptation of the greedy imagination and distorting the historical record. |
| 7 | 43 | | Some historical novelists have tried to portray themselves as superior to historians. |
| 44 | | Kenneth Roberts, author in the 1930's of many best-sellers about the Revolution, was |
| 45 | | fond of claiming that his books were 'a show-up of the historians'. When the historian |
| 46 | | Allan Nevins reviewed Northwest Passage in 1937, he got even by declaring it was good |
| 47 | | history but a poor novel. The outraged Roberts said Nevins should 'stay on his own side |
| 48 | | of the bed'. |
| 8 | 49 | | The metaphor is instructive, even if the fuming Roberts did not intend it to be. |
| 50 | | Historians and historical novelists are married to each other. This may not guarantee |
| 51 | | tranquility any more than vows at the altar. But the one should not mistake himself for |
| 52 | | the other. |
| | | |
| | | from an article by the historian Thomas Fleming in the 'New York Times Book Review', July 6, 1986 |
