HISTORY AND FICTION

 

I am a big fan of Andrea Barrett.  She always makes me think.

This latest outing of hers certainly made me think -- made me rethink my stance as a historian who writes history. Do I approve of fictionalized history?  I am not sure that I do -- but this collection of introspective essays certainly made me ponder deeply about it.

First, let's have a look at the book.  It is small, just 194 pages including index, endnotes and acknowledgements, and is divided into seven papers. All of them deal with how fact is incorporated into fiction. But, where I expected thoughts on how writers of historical fiction rely on fine historical research, it is more about how she, Andrea Barrett, used historical research to bring her characters -- both real and fictional -- alive.

First, there is an introduction, explaining how a woman from a non-reading family somehow became immersed in books, with descriptions of the books that particularly inspired her.  Then comes the first essay, provocatively titled "The Floating Pants." It was one that I particularly liked because it was about voyages in the Arctic, replete with unfortunate seafarers trapped in boats and ships that are carried helplessly in slowly floating ice.  This, of course, led to the novel, Voyage of the Narwhal. 

A novel, where I would have written a non-fiction account of these strange arduous adventures. Which is better?  To bring the brightness of life to a character, perhaps a novel is better. Perhaps not. That is the question.

Then comes "The Sea of Information," an essay I particularly liked, as it was about her Fellowship at the New York Public Library.  The descriptions of her fellow researchers there were brilliant, as I could relate to them so well, having been a research fellow (though not at that wonderful library) myself.  It contained one sentence that probably describes best her reasons for choosing fiction rather than non-fiction, built around the one word "emotion," and following her description of her impressive research into the topic she was following at the time. 

Slowly I began to relearn something I'd once grasped but lost sight of: that emotion -- that central element of fiction -- derives not from information or explanation, nor from a logical arrangement of facts, but from powerful images and from the qualities of language...

Facts, she came to understand, can "wall off emotion," and take life out of the story.

Do I agree with this?  I certainly do not -- but it certainly made me think about it.  

This progress of thought continued with the fifth paper, "Traveling Corpse."  A great story, this one, about a strange litte war in Russia in 1919, when a corps of unseasoned American recruits was sent there in the Arctic winter to fight the "on for the Boche" Revolutionaries.  Two sergeants arrive in a tiny village.  One takes his own life with his service revolver.  The other carries the frozen corpse on a sled to Archangel, on an almost unendurable four-day trek through blizzard conditions, for no apparent reason.

Barrett found three published versions of the story, during a search that is vividly described. This was a triumph -- but then came the problem that the three versions were all a little different.  Which one held the actual truth? The essay describes how she sorted out which little variation felt better -- or more right -- than the others, and which one suited her purposes. 

This struck a chord with me that resonated loudly.  When I researched Island of the Lost I was in the same position.  To explain: in the 1860s two ships wrecked about the same time on the desolate and uninhabited Auckland Islands, in the sub-Antarctic. There were two castaway parties separated by impassable ravines, and unaware of each other.  One party -- the Grafton castaways -- worked together to build a cabin and live off the bleak land to keep body and soul together. All five survived the ordeal.   The other party -- the Invercauld castaways -- descended into a state of apathy and chaos. Of 19, only three lived to tell the tale.

Like Barrett, I had three accounts, two written by Grafton castaways, and one the memoir of an Invercauld survivor.  I had the same problem of sorting out what was the best echo of what really happened: what could I reliably believe? How plausible was the detailed account of building the cabin, for instance?  It was a huge relief to get photographs of remains of the building from a friendly archaelogist who was recording the site. How self-serving was the account of the survivor of the Invercauld disaster? Again, it was reassuring to find the logbook account of the ship that followed up the first report of the castaways, and sent a government party there.

My success, I felt, was that I was able to write an accurate account of what happened, complete in all details possible. What I wonder is what kind of novel Barrett would have written from the same material.  The conclusion she come to in that essay is very pertinent:

Another writer, given the same material, would have felt entirely different imperatives and written an entirely different story; which is one of the reasons historical fiction is so different from history.