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.

She Says it Well...

Today I will be uncharacteristically brief. On Beyond the Margins' web site, Sarah McCoy eloquently testifies to "The Significance of Settings" in writing. (Not place settings, of course, but this is cheesecake, after all.)I hope you will read and appreciate her thoughts, as I have and as I do. Thanks, Sarah.

Settling In

It's a personal best. I've now lived at the same address for five and a half years.  I know that necessities, moves and changes can surprise a person and I have no exemption from life's disasters...nor do I want to imply a moral value to staying or leaving. I can only say that I'm glad to be where I am and I've learned a thing or two by staying here.

From my husband, I've learned from which direction the wind usually brings rain, where the falling, blowing snow will probably drift, as well as the related art of placing snow fences. I've watched potential tornado clouds flow like dark waters over my head, then felt relief because something bad didn't just happen to me, my neighbors or the crops in their fields. We all watch with anticipation for the first signs of the corn spiking, tasseling and firing and the soybean leaves drying yellow. Harvest is the best time, a culmination of a year's work and risk.

We built a house and we're planting trees and gardens (I use "we" inclusively, although I must give full credit to my husband for being the muscles of the operation.) I've learned exactly how not to cover tea roses in the winter if I want them to survive in this climate. I recognize a rhythm in the turn of constellations, the rising and setting of the sun and moon, the solstices and seasons. We're far enough from city lights to spot eclipses, meteor showers and even the occasional aurora borealis.

Around here, people welcome strangers inside if the weather's bad and it's not safe to travel. When two pickups idle in the middle of the street for the drivers to converse, you turn into the alley to get around them; you definitely don't honk. I've learned to avoid gossip but also to be amused by whatever rumor is going around about me. When I took a chance to play my guitar at a local gathering, they made me feel very talented and appreciated. You can't beat that.

Here's the irony. If any of my neighbors or people in town were to read this, they could, by rights, laugh me out of the county for claiming to be settled. They've lived here all their lives. Their great-grandparents are buried in that cemetery west of here. They model how to enjoy and care for other people, how not to get snooty when somebody offends because that person probably lives near you and you'll face him or her again.

Even the intention of staying affects everything about my life. Not only am I happy to take off my traveling shoes, but my extended family have "a place to come home to" in the midst of their own moves and changes. Maybe that makes them feel a little more steady, a little more recognized and a little stronger in their mobile day-to-day lives.

Staying affects my writing, providing a fulcrum for respecting and responding to other cultures, views and characters. It's easier to recognize what and where I'm not, when I take time to consider what and where I am. That brings me a little closer to the what, where and whom of every person I relate to, whether in fiction or in flesh. This includes the driver who pulled out in front of me on the 55 mph county highway and made me hit my brakes. It's not a problem, because we're both from around here. In fact, I'm fairly certain that he's the local funeral home director, so I did well to leave him with a good impression.

The Gift of Belonging

Great Plains and Western literature (and I) lost a wonderful friend last March. Dr. Arthur Huseboe contributed to so much in the lives of so many that I can't begin to detail his life. I came to know him while I was a student at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, SD, in the early 1980s, where he was my literature and creative writing professor. Dr. Huseboe was the first person to open my eyes to regional literature, specifically literature of the West and Great Plains of America, through his work as my teacher and through the Center for Western Studies at Augustana. He's the one who taught me about the significance of place in a writer's voice and work. Because of Dr. H, I think of myself as a regional writer.

Dr. Huseboe also took me seriously as a novelist, God bless him. He spent countless hours reading my first attempts at poetry, short stories and novels and encouraged me to keep trying. He introduced me to the Western Literature Association, whose members surely feel the great loss of their former President. He helped me to write my first scholarly paper on a South Dakota author, Herbert Krause, and encouraged me to present it at a WLA conference in Idaho. Dr. H also provided one of my favorite quotes about mentoring. "No one was ever corrected into perfection."

Fortunately, after some years away, I reconnected with him a few months before he died. His last words to me were of affection and encouragement and I will always thank him for that. So there it is. When I sit down to write, I often think of him. When I reflect on the Great Plains and the West as my home, I realize that he is the one who gave this vagabond a sense of regional belonging.

Thanks to my dear mentor, Dr. Arthur Huseboe, whom I deeply miss, for teaching me that I'm in a good place, writing it down, right here.

Writing it Then

I may be the world's most delinquent blogger, but I have been writing. This new story is requiring a great deal of research. Thanks to the Internet, that process is sometimes too enjoyable.
In my online and "inbooks" research, I've been in places as specific as London...Calais...Berlin and Steinhoering Germany and last, but not least, the Republican River valley in Franklin County, Nebraska. The only one of those places I have ever actually visited was that part of Nebraska, where my parents grew up and my grandparents lived as I was a child. (The photo at left is of my Grandpa Henry Feess, holding me in front of the Franklin County Courthouse.) Among those different and distant places are also different times...1900-1960s, with the narrator telling the story in 1968.

My current novel was in process when I had the pleasure of reading Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel. It is a fascinating and vivid retelling of the story of Thomas Cromwell, the first Earl of Essex during the reign of Henry VII. She reveals some of the challenges of research, which took her five years, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
 
"To avoid contradicting history, she created a card catalogue, organized alphabetically by character. Each card contained notes locating a particular historical figure—such as protagonist Thomas Cromwell, Henry's adviser—on relevant dates.

'You really need to know, where is the Duke of Suffolk at the moment? You can't have him in London if he's supposed to be somewhere else,' she says." (1)

Checking facts provides a sturdy framework for plot and character. Thorough research might include contemporaneous fashion, household items, road and topographical maps, train schedules and bus routes, medical procedures and reading materials, to name a few. But then, there's all the rest. Of course, I'm sure Ms. Mantel would agree. Physical location in time and space is only the first part of the challenge. In my case, I'm involving my characters with actual historic figures, as she did, so I must share her scruples.

 
Characters in historical fiction may not have access to public education and may struggle with common injuries and diseases that have no cure. They may witness death as an ordinary event and find themselves caught up in historic tides, without the luxury or arrogance that time provides for interpretation. Picture a man who only listens to his radio for music and events and reads the paper primarily to develop his political views...a woman who boards a ship or a train incognito, instead of going through a security check and body pat-down at the airport...someone who isn't traceable with a number on a cell phone or a or credit or debit card, so he or she could get lost and found repeatedly, even reinventing himself or herself, at will.

This lovely ordeal of maybes and maybe nots, this process of writing takes time and mental immersion. It's exciting and will not be rushed. But it's a marvelous moment when the characters begin to speak in their own language, in their own time, even talking back when you try to make them do something they can't fathom from their time and place. Then the real education and fun begin for this writer.

Thanks to Hilary Mantel, I have a new respect for authors of quality historical fiction, their processes and results. Now I just may be addicted, as well, to writing it there and then.


(1) "How to Write a Great Novel," Wall Street Journal Friday, November 13, 2009. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703740004574513463106012106.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_lifestyle
(2) This image is of book cover, found on Wikipedia and Amazon.com, and the copyright for it is most likely owned either by the artist who created the cover or the publisher of the book. It is believed that the use of low-resolution images of book covers to illustrate an article discussing the book in question qualifies as fair use under United States copyright law. This is my sole intention in uploading the image.