An Authentic Place in History: More Thoughts on Writing it Then

Writing (historical) fiction--any fiction that isn't in the "now" -- complicates the attempt to connect with the cultures, land and languages of specific locations. As I currently write about European cities and villages in the early to mid-20th century, I encounter myriad uncertainties about occupancy, politics, languages and loyalties, through time.

In my American experience, I assume a relatively stable history--at least for the last two hundred years or so. After squelching the first people on this land we call "America" (one branch of my family tree, now untraceable), our State has occupied much of the same area, over time, with a few additions, here and there. 

So what or where is "there?"

"There" can be a shibboleth, a geographical feature, a style of architecture or a spice in food. It can be a pattern of emigration or the burden of political or religious persecution, tribal or global. It can be an experience of isolation or a hectic trampling under a thundering new civilization. I can be a fossil or a gigabyte. It can be general, but particularly in fiction, it is always personal.

Writing about history and attempting to capture an authentic sense of place can be risky and confusing. Exhilarating, if it works. Embarrassing, if it doesn't. Nobody wants to be caught with literary or historical "foot in mouth" by a sin of omission--a failure to steep the writing in more than just a "Wiki" or "Google" glance at the people and places we depict. On the other hand, the hyper-availability of information at our fingertips can glut and stall a writer's mind.

So we try to find a middle ground. As the late Tony Judt stated in his last work, Thinking the Twentieth Century, in conversations with Timothy Snyder, "The truth of authenticity is different from the truth of honesty. To be authentic is to live as one wishes others to live; to be honest is to admit that this is impossible." As novelists, we try to be authentic, but must admit that we live in a different time or place than what we depict. Imagination is not license and history is not a shackle, but we owe it to our readers to do our best, to be true to both.