Saturday, June 8, 2013

HOW “HISTORICAL” DOES HISTORICAL FICTION NEED TO BE?


HOW “HISTORICAL” DOES HISTORICAL FICTION NEED TO BE?

How far back in the past does a novel have to take place for the work to be called a historical novel? As Kathy Lynn Emerson suggests in her fine book How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries, the answers to this question are numerous. “If you want a specific date—x years ago is historical; more recent than that is not—there are several available.” Some rudimentary Googling yields a lot of similarly inconclusive rules. Two that I find most intriguing are:
1. The plot must take place at least 50 years prior to the copyright date of the first edition of the book; and
2. The writing process must rely more on research than on personal experience.

The reason this question concerns me is that I have written and published (on Kindle and Nook) a family saga trilogy based very loosely on my own family history. I hasten to say that it’s primarily a work of imagination, but the inspiration for the central character of the first book, who is also a secondary character of Books II and III, is my own remarkable uncle. I call him Fergus Powers.

The first novel, Geronimo’s Skull, begins at the Saint Louis World’s Fair in 1904, when Fergus is nine years old, and ends shortly before the Stock Market Crash on 1929, when Fergus is thirty-four. This novel is a ghost story, a love story, a war story, a modern western, and a tale of high finance. It’s clearly dated more than 50 years prior to its copyright date, so I’m safe on that count. I’m in the clear about the research part, too. I wasn’t alive during that era, so I had to do extensive research on the life and death of Geronimo, the St. Louis World’s Fair, Skull and Bones, World War One, Paris in the 1920s, the history of Route 66, and much more. So yes, Geronimo’s Skull is a historical novel.


 
For more about this novel, see http://www.danielpublishing.com/jmd/geronimo's_skull.html

The second novel in the trilogy, Elephant Lake, takes place entirely in the summer of 1950, which satisfies the rule that the plot take place 50 or more years prior to copyright date. However I flunk the other requirement. I did no research for Elephant Lake, other than to mine my crystal-clear memory (don’t ask me what movie I saw last Friday night, but I’m certain of what a Pepsi cost in 1950). Actually, I relied not so much on memory of factoids, as on memory of my dreams of flight.
I suppose the novel, though it takes place 63 years ago, isn’t a historical novel, then. It’s based on my first summer living on my uncle’s country estate outside Dallas. It was a summer full of loneliness and fear, and confusion about the adults in my life; but it is buoyed up by an ability to escape. My fictional eight-year-old hero flies—literally—and rides an elephant, slays a dragon, and rescues a future President of the United States from drowning.


 

I’m afraid the third book in my Fergus Powers Trilogy is not historical in either sense. It is made up of three novellas that take place entirely in the year 1963. Historically 1963 was an important year for our nation and for the world, and as of now that year is fifty years ago; but Promises, Promises, was copyrighted and epublished in 2011. As for research, again I relied on my memories of that year, fictionalized by imagination, and I didn’t do much research except to check when the moon was full.
It was a big year for my uncle, and for Fergus Powers. He/they got married that year for the first time, at the age of 68. A big year for his sister, who had to leave her home at Elephant Lake. A big year for Fergus Power’s nephew, now 21-year-old artist spending his first summer away from home, painting a mural for a movie star. And 1963 was a horribly big year for the United States, when President Kennedy was killed and the world spun out of control.



Here’s more about Promises, Promises, Promises:

So is my Fergus Powers trilogy a work of historical fiction? Book I is historical on both counts. Book II is historical time-wise but not in terms of research. Book III is disqualified on both counts.
I’ve just done the math. The Fergus Powers trilogy is semi-historical. I wonder if there’s a contest for semi-historical fiction…?

11 comments:

  1. The year 1963 is historical in my view. I'm sure 50 years is just a guideline.

    No problem for me! I write western stories. All westerns are historical fiction. They present the same problems - accuracy, especially about firearms and horses.

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    1. I see what you mean, Dac, but that raises another question: what is a "western" story? More narrowly defined than just set in the AMerican west, surely. There must be some time zone to qualify. Pre-automotive? Is Edna Ferber's GIANT a western?

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  2. I'd say yes, it's historical. And that's a tricky business to get into! In my novel 'American Caliphate' chapter 2 takes places in Cordoba, Spain in 1542. I think I spent as much time on that chapter as the rest of the chapters combined!

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    1. I bet you did, Bill, and I bet you enjoyed your research related to Cordoba, since digging into the past (literally and figuratively) is your chosen field.

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  3. Interesting question, John.
    Definitions are constantly changing. Take antiques. The rule used to be that an item had to be 100 years old to be considered an antique. Now, as I watch "Antiques Roadshow," that doesn't seem to be the case. Maybe it's the same with historical fiction and the answer lies "in the eye of the beholder."

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    1. I think you're right, Pat. Some readers might consider any fiction that involves a rotary dial telephone as historical.

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  4. An antique dealer friend of my dad's used to say, 'if it's older than you, it's an antique.' As Pat mentions, definitions keep changing. The antiques question was resolved by coming up with the term 'collectible' for items not quite old enough to qualify as antiques.
    Your trilogy qualifies as interesting no matter what people chose to call it.

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    1. I like that word "collectible," John. Question: do we want our books to become collectible. Yes if that means they're literary treasures. No if that means hard to find.

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  5. This puts me in mind of the Kent Family Chronicles which came out in the 1970s. I don't recall in what year the series ended, but those books (8?) were part fiction and part history. As far as I'm concerned, whether or not it's historical is in the mind of the reader. An 18-year-old reading your book from the 1950s would certainly think of it as historical. Me? Yes, at this time I'd probably think of it as historical, too.
    Marja McGraw

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    1. I agree, Marja. An eighteen year old reader would probably consider a lot of my novels historical. Come to think of it, I might consider a lot of contemporary fiction written by an eighteen year old writer science fiction!

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  6. An interesting question. I think Marja is correct about the age of the person reading the book. I remember having a discussion in my college class one day about music. One of my stucents asked if Paul McCartney had been in any band other than "Wings". Yikes!

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