3/15/2004
Historical Fiction
John Updike recently suggested that all fiction is, in a sense,
historical, since it involves the writer's memories; but historical fiction is
generally understood to require some research as a basis for reconstructing the past.
Material culture is the easiest to study: written descriptions,
photographs, drawings, paintings, carvings, museum artifacts, cities where the past
survives (such as the historic district of Florence) are a prime resource not
only for fiction but for the kind of TV documentaries in which costumed
reenactments alternate with learned commentary.
More elusive are social structures and belief systems. In literate
societies, diaries and autobiographies are an invaluable resource. Although poetry
and sagas from an oral tradition can suggest the outlines of a belief system,
so much remains unknown that writing a historical novel from those kind of
sources is like trying to wallpaper a room with too few rolls.
The writer, interpreting all of this through a 21st Century sensibility,
must imagine a world primarily defined by a character's own experience and
travels, unlike our own constantly connected media surround. And imagine as
well a different kind of cognitive style, less distracted, more inclined to move
slowly and persistently towards the solution of a problem.
6/1/2003
Sword and Skeleton
Thirty-five years ago, in the Danish National Museum, I made the acquaintance of a
thousand-year-old Viking woman who was resting serenely in a display case. Her arms and
legs were flexed, and I conjectured that she had been a tall woman when she was alive—a tall woman with strong teeth that still survived, as did a single bronze hairpin
angled above her (former) left ear.
In those days I was a frequent visitor to the museum, drawing, photographing and
making notes about pottery and glassware, wooden tableware, jewelry, fragments of sword
and shield. On each visit I stopped to look at the Viking woman and wonder about her
life.
When we returned to Denmark in 1975, the museum seemed unchanged—the artifacts
and their laconic labels in the same dusty cases, the Vikng woman still revealing
nothing about her life.
In 1991 we made a brief visit to Denmark, where the museum renovation had just
begun, and this spring we returned and visited the completely redesigned museum. The
somber grey runestones that used to greet visitors near the entrance now have "their own
space," and their incised runes are chalk-reddened to enhance visibility. In another
room, a single display case shimmers with gold fingerrings, and in a wall-length case,
lur horns float like giant bronze seahorses. In the textile room, contemporary copies of
ancient weaves show the vividness of the original blues and reds.
Once again I sought the mute Viking woman and found her upgraded to a new and
larger display case. She was still resting imperturably on her side, the long, slender
hairpin still remembering a vanished headscarf.
4/1/2003
Imagination
I've been thinking about times past, when folk assembled near a hearth-fire to hear a comic tale, a myth, a fragment of their own folk history. And a thousand years later, the oral tradition now transformed by radio waves, people gathered by the family radio to listen to Fibber McGee, Jack Benny, Fred Allen. Throughout the 1940's, radio was a lavish/rich source of the images collected/archived in our minds.
But during the '50s, the warm luminosity of the radio dial was being supplanted by the coolly flickering television screen, initiating a transition/change from word-based, homemade images to an overwhelmingly visual environment.
In what way, I wonder, does this 24/7 image bath affect contemporary imagination? Is it a good thing? A bad thing? A little of both?
My tentative conclusion is that the enlargement of our image world can be stimulating and enriching. Imagine a child who sees a film about a girl living in a jungle, with exotic animals in a wild landscape unlike anything in her own experience. Imagine that she returns home after the film and goes in the backyard, finds a good tree to climb, and in its foliage creates her own jungle. The muscle of imagination is stretched and strengthened.
But if a video game, which only reiterates images from the film, replaces the child's imaginary tree-jungle, then her wonderful image-and-idea making capacity is neglected and perhaps, after a while, diminished.
