Novel History: Historians and Novelists Confront America's Past

by Mark C. Carnes (Editor)

Renowned historians tackle the subject of the historical novel in a collection of essays on the nature and accuracy of historical fiction, with responses from famous authors, including Don DeLillo, John Updike, Jane Smiley, and Gore Vidal. 15,000 first printing.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Essays, Books About Books, Reference

352 pages, Hardcover

First published March 9, 2001

About the author

Mark C. Carnes is Professor of History at Barnard College.

Reviews

[Lewis Weinstein]

NOVEL HISTORY is concerned about the place of historical truth in a historical novel. Historians critique a series of novels regarding their historical accuracy, and the novelists get to answer.

I just read the pages dealing with Russell Bank's Cloudsplitter, comprising first a short essay by the esteemed historian James McPherson and then Banks' rejoinder.

The issue of interest to me is the rigidity - or not - with which the novelist is expected to approach historical fact. McPherson, who probably knows every single place where Banks has strayed from the consensus of history, quotes Banks' Author Notes where he explicitly states that he has altered and rearranged historical events and characters to suit the purposes of his storytelling.

McPherson does not argue with what Banks has done, accepting that the work is a fiction, not an interpretation of history, although he suggests that some of his historian colleagues might not be so forgiving. McPherson says he is quite willing to learn from the “novelist’s license to reconstruct the past in the interests of a reality deeper than literal fact.”.

Banks responds indirectly by first establishing that the “voice” of the story defines the history that will be heard. “If there is history in a historical novel … it can only exist in the voice that we hear when we read the story.” Then he asserts that the questions the author has in his mind, the questions arising from the history that drove him to write the story, dictate his choice of the “voice” he will use to tell it.

The combination of the author’s questions and the “voice” who answers them will be the "voice of history in the fiction," in McPherson’s wonderfully generous formulation, the “reality deeper than literal fact.”

What a privilege to read and learn from this dialogue.

[Shomeret · Rating 4 out of 5]

I saw this in my feed when a friend marked it To Read. It looked fascinating, but I have to admit that I skipped over essays about books that I hadn't read and had no interest in reading. If I had no interest in reading it, the dialogue between historian and author about the book held no interest for me either.

Of the books I had read previously, I was most interested in the dialogue over All Souls' Rising by Madison Smartt Bell about Haiti's revolution. I discovered from Trouillot's essay that Victor Hugo had also written a novel about it. I want to find out what the author of Les Miserables had to say about Haiti and Toussaint L'Ouverture. I also loved Gore Vidal's response to Joanne Freeman's criticisms of Burr.

David S. Reynolds wanted me to know that The Scarlet Letterwas unoriginal and probably intended as a potboiler. I don't really care. It's still one of my favorite classics. There are reasons why it's still being read and the books from that era that were similar are unknown.

[Paul Toth · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent rumination on the timely topic of history vs. fiction or, better put, history and fiction as unwitting collaborators. In short, though many of those involved may well be tall, a historian takes on a "historical" novel to debate its merits as "felt" history and verisimilitude, to varying degrees of enlightenment and daft academic blindness. The novel's author then responds to the criticisms, to varying degrees of every writer's enjoyable petulant wrath...so long as that writer is not me, and it's not in this case since I don't write historical novels. Unless you want to count Airplane Novel. Rather than count it, but it. In any event, especially historical events, if your enjoyment of history is matched by a nearly equal enjoyment of fiction, or vice versa, this book as discussion will always interest and often fascinate you.

[Marvin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has been on my to-read list for many years, but I just now finally got around to requesting it on interlibrary loan since my local library does not hold it. It's a collection of essays by highly respected historians, each writing about one individual historical novel, about half of which I have read. In many cases, the novelist offers a brief response, often more defensive than necessary, because most of the essays are, in fact, quite appreciative of what the novelists bring to their subjects. Their reflections are stimulating. I especially enjoyed John Demos's response to Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose. Alas, most of the historians, even Demos, tend to write for other historians, though I'm pretty sure that's not what the editor of the collection had in mind. That didn't lessen my appreciation, but it might for many readers.

[Richard Subber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Carnes has organized an appealing contrast of views about history and novel writing.
You’ll recognize some of the names: Gore Vidal, John Updike, James McPherson, Larry McMurtry, William Styron, Nathaniel Hawthorne, John Lukacs, and Charles Frazier, to name a few.
Novel History offers commentary about 20 novels, and for many of them, the author chimes in with well-considered remarks about the historian’s point of view.
You haven’t heard it all before.
Read more of my book reviews and poems here:
www.richardsubber.com

[Russel Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting idea, pairing historians' criticisms of significant works of historical fiction with authors' rejoinders. Some of the criticisms were sympathetic and some less laudatory, but the editor did a good job of representing a wide breadth of epistemology in his selections. Enjoyable on the whole, some pieces more than others.

[Eliot · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many of these novels were unfamiliar to me, but now I must read them.

[A. H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Especially good, the last chapter, but please read In the Lake of the Woods first.

[Bill FromPA · Rating 2 out of 5]

On the whole, the historians are too indulgent of the liberties taken by novelists, though the latter in their responses tend to be nevertheless defensive. Two quotations. Charles Frazier:

... two Jamesean pronouncements, copied out on three-by-five cards. One reads, "The historical novel is, for me condemned ... to a fatal cheapness." The other is, "The sense of the past is our sense." How - no matter which target, in the end, one more nearly hits - to shoot toward the latter and a way from the former is a question any writer working with historical material must consider, for at the heart of the matter is the difference between The Scarlet Pimpernel and The Scarlet Letter.

John Lukacs:

… every novel is a historical novel … the present, all-too-evident, intrusion of history into fiction is an even newer phenomenon – surely connected with the present crisis, and the eventual reformation, of the novel. A manifestation of this is not only the so-called documentary or docudrama but the new hybrid thing that has the silly name of “faction”. All kinds of writers have been trying this (Upton Sinclair, Dos Passos, Irwin Shaw, Capote, Styron, Barth, Doctorow, Mailer, Sontag, DeLillo, Vidal, Pynchon, in this country, many others abroad, including Solzhenitsyn in 1914, his least valuable book). What is significant is that these novelists are, all, interested in history. They have reversed the historical novel, where history was the colorful background: for these twentieth-century writers history is the foreground, since that is what attracts them. Yes, that is a symptom of the continuing evolution of a historical consciousness. But most of these writers don’t really know that, which is why their books are flawed: for they illegitimately mix up history and fiction. They include and twist and deform and attribute thoughts and words and acts to historical figures (Lincoln or Wilson or Roosevelt or Kennedy) who actually existed. This is illegitimate, and antihistorical – no matter that some academic historians say that it serves salutary purposes, since it introduces all kinds of people to history, after all. They are wrong. What they ought to recognize, rather, is the untrammeled spreading of a historical consciousness whereby it is indeed possible that in the future the novel may be entirely absorbed by history, feeding the famished appetites of readers for what really happened, for a past that was real, for how men and women really were, how they acted and spoke and thought at a certain time - a time that may include the near-present.

[Wilhelmina Jenkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Historians and novelists reflect of the interaction between history and fiction that results in a work of historical fiction. Many of the selections were very interesting; a few were annoying. My overall impression from the novelists was the emphatic reminder that these books must be seen as fictional, inaccurate in detail but attempting to seek a human truth that goes beyond merely factual.

[Tracey]

810.9003 Novel 2001 - Ginnie gave 4 stars

[Terry · Rating 3 out of 5]

An examination of twenty historical novels which tries to determine how well they illuminate history. Good but not quite what I had hoped for.

[Cat Kelley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Intersting look at the history behind historical fiction. A historian examines various novels and lthen the authors of said novels respond. I'm really enjoying this so far.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Collection of essays reviewing works of historical fiction and then a place for the author of the reviewed work to respond. Clever idea, some essays are better than others.

[Don · Rating 3 out of 5]

I only read a few of these… But they're interesting and fun and I will keep this book on my shelf to glance through whenever I have gotten to another historical novel on the list.