Does it matter—in so far as anything literary matters these days—if historical fiction is inaccurate? (my italics) (A Historical Whopper, Theodore Dalrymple, BMJ). (Thanks to John Grue for the link.)In fact Martis Amis has engaged in his fiction with notions presented to us by science, and it's becoming clear that there's a disjunction between his fiction and his public pronouncements, but while I find the latter understandable as a novelist's hyperbole and ironic provocation, I also consider them irresponsible and even dangerous in the context of public debate.
But it wasn't just the angle of the discussion which created this inadvertent demotion of literature; Amis was explicit: Literature doesn't make anything happen, he said.
I'm not the only one who is incensed by such a statement. Clare Dudman, chemist and fiction writer, commented on my post below:
Did Martin Amis really say that? The point of literature then is that it has no point. If any of us believed that then surely we wouldn't write at all!Exactly. Call me an uncool idealist, but I would never have written my novel The Birth Machine, or the novella which is currently seeking a publisher, if I hadn't hoped they might at least cause some debate about certain modes of scientific thinking and their effects on our lives - and surely, to influence thought and opinion is potentially to influence action.
Today Robert McCrum (who once thought that good literature always finds a market, but who has clearly changed his mind on this) describes the very real way in which serious literature is being eradicated from our culture. He ends on a positive note, with the hope that the recession, by squeezing the publishing industry as a whole and along with it the bestseller culture, will make way for a resurgence of serious literature. Hope he's right, and just so long as Martin Amis and others stop announcing the urbane uselessness of literature...
16 comments:
I fink, in my unedjicated way, that there is maybe a point being missed, somewhere?
Just because a writer sets a story/novel in times historic does NOT make it a 'historic novel'.
Does it?
To this writer, a historic novel is one based on much detailed research, and accurate. Like a history book. (If those are accurate!)
Then there is fiction.
Hi Vanessa: in quoting the BMJ writer I wasn't really concerned with his view of historical fiction, but with his reference 'in so far as anything literary matters nowadays', ie his more general implication that literature doesn't really matter.
I guess I agree on the whole with what you're saying, ie that fiction doesn't have to be bound by historical truth because it's a different kind of reality. However, there's always the problem in fiction that an obvious factual error can destroy a reader's faith in the authenticity of the whole - a problem which I think can be magnified for historical fiction.
...or should I say, according to your definition, novels set in earlier historical periods.
There was a great article in the Telegraph defending novels against just such a thing; http://artsravel.blogspot.com/2008/12/sam-leith-defend-books-i-applaud.html
Interesting. Thanks for that, Art.
EB,
We get into somewhat murky territory when we speak about the "use" of something or other—in this case, fiction, or its point.
Much of 20th Century criticism was a squabble over who could lay authentic claim to the territory: feminists, Marxists, queer theorists, Freudians, etc. The use of a literary text or tradition to prove a theoretical point, that is to say its point, was at direct issue. This was adjunct to the battle for meaning between author and reader/critic which was the response to the so-called New Critics for whom authorial intentions were strictly out of bounds.
So, I'm not quite sure what you're arguing here. There is a robust 'art-for-art's-sake' movement' asserting the use of fiction can only be to comprehend itself—let's call this the 'bauble' crowd. Other, more progressive voices, claim there is an on-going, in-bred sort of conversation wherein fictional works progress (look, e.g., at Zadie Smith's recent article in the NYRB about Remainder pointing the way forward for the novel), the continuation of which being their sole point.
The writing of science can, of course, be scored on literary points, but that fails to account for its substantive reference. It has a demonstrative and an explanatory power we fiction writers employ at our peril. Fiction writing is of another sort altogether—inventive, allusive, figurative, humanistic(?), etc., etc.
This is a topic I stray in and out of with some regularity at my blog: http://wisdomofthewest.blogspot.com. Drop by sometime.
Elaborate, kindly, on the sorts of things Literature makes happen—other than, say, create a feeling (an aesthetic experience, so to speak) in its consumers.
Lovely blog!
Best,
Jim H.
Hello Jim,
Thanks for commenting.
Yes, I agree it's all a bit murky, and a minefield of semantics, which I think I may have stepped into in using the word 'useless'. (I'm not an academic, and I comment only as a writer and reader.)
I don't subscribe to any crude utilitarian notion of fiction, and believe that using it as an ideological tool runs counter to (and rides roughshod over) its nature which as you say is allusive, glancing, multiple etc, and I'm no fan of overtly polemical fiction.
What I'm railing against, at bottom, is a general tendency to declare or render serious fiction irrelevant (either inadvertently, or consciously in response to commercial imperatives). It's a question of whether serious fiction matters.
Clearly as a writer I think it does, and as for why, and what I think fiction can make happen, well, I'd say it's no small thing that fiction operates on our feelings, that this is actually a very big thing to make happen, and from which other happenings can follow, including, potentially, new insights and possible consequent shifts in attitude.
Although I know of course that we can't legislate for how people read our fiction...
Thanks for alerting me to your blog - it looks very interesting.
The post made me remember the Aesthetic Theory vs. Artistic Mystery section in Gardner's _The Art of Fiction_.
Fiction writing is, I agree, an "ancient but still valid kind of thought."
(If interested, I wrote an essay about this. There's nothing new in my point, really, but I don't think anybody has collected quotes from editors of current literary journals...
http://www.darkskymagazine.com/artistic-truth-and-the-literary-magazine-as-cultural-bulwark/
Justin, thanks for this. That's a great article!
Well Martin Amis' books might be useless but lots of other people's aren't.
Maybe he should just be quiet and go and do something else. That would be great actually. I look forward to seeing him stocking the fruit and veg in a local supermarket any day soon.
Oh dear, Rachel, that's bit harsh...
It's a while now since I read any of Amis's fiction, but personally, I've been a great fan of his prose style, and as far as I can remember the insights in his fiction.
I tend to think he's one of those writers whose profile is bigger than their readership. Who HAS been reading his books lately? Anyone? Yet he still gets to be big important Martin with so much to say and so many places to say it.
Haven't read all the links, so apologies if I'm repeating/failing-to-argue-with things...
"Just because a writer sets a story/novel in times historic does NOT make it a 'historic novel'."
To my mind a historical novel is simply and solely one set in the past - definitions of 'past' vary, but 'a time before the writer was born' is a good working premise, because it's the only premise which is based on the most basic difference of historical fiction from other ficiton: the writer needing to imagine things s/he couldn't have drawn from his/her own life, nor have invented. (The latter is needed to exclude sf/f from the definition, because otherwise it has a lot in common with hist fic).
"much detailed research, and accurate. Like a history book."
But I'm not writing a history book. I'm not sure that when it comes to fiction the quantity or quality (which is 'detailed'?) should be the criterion. Surely historical fiction is about re-imagining the past, so it comes alive for present readers. What or how much research it takes the writer to do that re-imagining is surely beside the point.
More sophisticatedly, historical fiction as I find myself writing it is not just set in the past, but about our relationship to the past - about History, in other words. And no less a novelist than Stevie Davies has said that history and memory are the novel's deepest preoccupations, and I agree. In fact, my latest effort was largely shaped by the argument about when and how we should try to re-create or re-imagine the past. (Whether or if or how that shaping came about was because I was writing in the context of a PhD is not for me to judge.)
Re CP Snow and the like (I remember my grandfather, a Classic and academic of Snow's generation and world, talking about 'the humble, necessary chemist' - boo! hiss!)... What this conception of the world - still dreadfully common among both arts/humanities types and scientists - misses is how much the two kinds of thinking have in common. The creative brain works the same for all of us human creatures. The divergence comes later, in the languages we choose to express our thought in, and the ends to which we put that expression. Root-Bernstein's book Sparks of Genius, though dressed up as a self-help manual, is good on this stuff.
Emma, this is a great assessment of the role and nature of the historical novel, and I am very excited by the idea of its exploring our relationship with the past (rather than simply the past). And I love that quote from Stevie Davies; history and memory are, I agree, core preoccupations of fiction; even apparently uber-contemporary fiction, to my mind, negotiates with the past.
And yes, I so agree with you that it's a complete misconception that 'scientific' and 'artistic' thinking are polar opposites: for a start, most scientific discoveries emerge from hypotheses, ie a creative leaps of the imagination.
I think it's the critic/novelist Margaronis who, in the context of discussing the way we make sense of our lives and our world by turning what's happened into stories - turning past into memory - describes fiction as 'the memories we don't have'
That's brilliant - so right! Thanks for that, Emma.
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