Why Are We Living in a Golden Age of Historical Fiction? (2019) | Hacker News Reader

Why Are We Living in a Golden Age of Historical Fiction? (2019)

nytimes.com

48 pointspepys38 comments

One element you get for free in a historical setting is a deep & nuanced moral setting that is different from ours.

You can certainly write a novel about aliens and their moral codes can play a role. It's very hard to make it nuanced and fleshed out though. Sure, a character can be conflicted between human and Klingon moral codes... but it tends to be a lot flatter than real life. The motivations are more explicit and single dimensional. Fictional honour codes and such tend to be much more legible than real ones.

If we go to a past (including fictional ones like game of thrones or lotr), we get a moral contrast for free. There are still trope traps like giving the "good guys" a relatable, dissenting, modern moral sense. But on average, a writer can give a 19th century nun a worldview that is both sufficiently deep and sufficiently different to ours. In a futuristic or fantasy setting, you tend to get a lot more "orcs and vogons" philosophy.

The reason is that the complexity of the world is increasing, including the scale of the problems. It is hard to be perspicacious with such a vast influx of information, and it is therefore comforting and hopeful to look back on a past from which one can extrapolate and understand causality. In other words, we may be trying to unearth the essence of bygone eras in an attempt to see the way forward.

"History doesnt repeat itself, but it often rhymes"

Possibly. I enjoy historical fiction not because I think it can tell me much about the problems of today but more because it can put them in perspective. Reading about Europe in the Middle Ages is great for making me appreciate the quality of life I enjoy today.

I agree. After reading a few Tom Holland books (not really historical fiction) like Dominion, under the shadow of the sword, millennium, Rubicon you start to realise how awful ancient civilizations were. Slavery was just a just an accepted norm. Likelyhood of disease or famine killing you was way higher. Worst of all was probably lack of proper plumbing. Until fairly recently, human existence for the majority, was a picture of hell.

This can also swing the other way, shining a light on ways of living (certainly including societies much less violent than the Roman Empire, a civilization neurotically focused on domination) & experiences that have since been lost and are more or less impossible to achieve now.

I think you've perfectly characterized why I love listening to Dan Carlin. He's masterful at personalizing history (even ancient history) and challenging you to ponder how you would act under the same circumstances.

I think this form of thinking, when approached with an open mind and a little imagination, is a wonderful antidote to the knee-jerk group-think that dominates today's discourse.

Shame he is bad at history though. He is an entertainer, not someone to learn about the past from like you would from a historian.

In what ways is he bad at history? Do you have examples?

A contemporary take on the real golden age of fiction: memoirs. (1) Memoirs by 29 year olds. Memoirs by celebrities. Historical fiction is the more marketable form of historical fiction (fiction about oneself), at least for people who actually buy and read books.

Reading of books has declined really crazily in the last 5 years. (2) (3) Can there be a golden age of fiction of any kind if people aren't reading? Would you have any idea what memoirs by 29 year olds I'm referring to if you don't read? No, of course not. How is anyone here supposed to have that conversation, if they don't read?

One thing's for sure. Margaret Atwood is writing a sequel to Handmaid's Tale because of the TV show. Seems like a pretty meaningful omission of fact. It's still fundamentally about marketability.

Julie Orringer, Colson Whitehead, George Saunders, Anna Burns, Marlon James, Gina Apostol, Yaa Gyasi, Jonathan Franzen... Great authors, yes, but like many Academy winning filmmakers' movies, hardly anyone has read their books. That sucks, it's not a refutation of their work.

(1) https://www.amazon.com/best-sellers-books-Amazon/zgbs/books/...

(2) https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/29/leisu...

(3) https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/feb/29/children-r...

How are memoirs fiction? I’m not sure what you mean.

I don’t read memoirs. Doesn’t mean I don’t read.

We’ve had stories for thousands of years, and the distinction between fact, fiction, propaganda, and lies, has always been based in tribal systems of authority. The tribes are bigger, the authorities more rigid, and we now think that the difference actually matters.

We're not living in a Golden Age of Historical Fiction; in fact everything I recognize in that list is total trash. John Biggins is pretty good though. A Sailor of Austria is better than any of the Flashmans I've read (the other 3 are good too).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Biggins

I enjoyed the Flashman series, but the reboot has disappointed me. It replaced the dark humor of the originals with predictable heroics.

I certainly hope you’re not calling Hilary Mantel and Colson Whitehead’s work “trash.” Even if you’re not personally a fan, that is a ridiculously dismissive attitude.

You can explain why you disagree, but simply shaming someone about their opinion doesn't add to any conversation. It helps no one to know that you are one additional person who likes a successful commercial product (unless someone is trying to buy you a birthday present, but we don't know you), it helps when you say why you like something.

edit: you may argue that the comment you replied to was simply disagreeing with the article, not explaining why. I would argue that you're simply disagreeing with a comment simply disagreeing with the article - which is a position already filled by the article, with adequate explanation.

I mean, the original post didn’t explain why they considered almost the entire list to be trash either. Not sure why only one person is getting chastized here.

I’m not shaming him, but the idea that Wolf Hall and The Nickel Boys are “trash” is bizarre and, as I said, ridiculously dismissive. They both won multiple national-level awards for best novel of the year. This is also ridiculously dismissive:

> It helps no one to know that you are one additional person who likes a successful commercial product (unless someone is trying to buy you a birthday present, but we don't know you)

First of all, the rank condescension is really not ok. Second of all, it wasn’t that they were “commercially successful” (another argument dripping with condescension), it’s that they had unanimous critical approval, and that Wolf Hall in particular is widely regarded as among the best English-language novels since World War II. Many critics consider it the best historical novel ever written.

It would be like if I said “Citizen Kane is trash, only ignorant philistines like that movie” - it’s a very strong argument with no explanation, and whose dismissiveness and ignorance is self-evident. I don’t have to explain why the movie is good to criticize that comment.

On the other hand I found Wolf Hall and its sequels rather underwhelming, and failed to evoke a sense of the past. It's characters seemed to think as if they were living in today's world, and it is lacking in description and establishment of a firmly historical premises.

For example it makes no effort to give a sense of the vocabulary or pattern of speech of its time.

So in which sense Wolf Hall is to be feated as great historical novel in a language which has a grand tradition of historical novels from the time of Walter Scott onwards is debatable.

Reminds me of Alfred Lord Duggan's "Count Bohemond" where Sichelgaita of Salerno comes off as one of Bertie Wooster's harridan aunts. Also trash historical fiction, but unlike the above authors, Duggan never pretended otherwise.

https://archive.is/4pyzm

My first experience of historical fiction was The Gallows Pole by Benjamin Myers. This recounts the story of the Cragg Vale Coiners who clipped coins and used those clippings to mint new coins. Rather than being driven by greed the clippers used the money to help feed the rest of their community. It's a really lovely book and gives a fantastic insight into the lives of the people of that period and area.

https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Benjamin-Myers/The-Gallows-Po...

I think the golden age of historical fiction is long past, of works like:

-Walter Scott's Ivanhoe

-George Eliot's Romola

-Henryk Sienkiewicz's Quo Vadis

-Bulwer Lytton's Last days of Pompeii

-Evelyn Waugh's Helena

-Anatole France's God's are athirst.

-Tolstoy's War and Peace

-Gore Vidal's Burr and also some of the others.

User name is fairly appropriate: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Pepys

eponysterical https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=eponysterica...

Can't read article due to subscribe-wall but just putting in a shout for Wolf Hall and its sequels. I know its kindof redundant to recommend something already so successful and well known, but if you've been steering clear of that stuff because it seems boring, really, its worth checking out. It brings "500 years ago" to life in a very vivid, intricate way, and the main character is such a fascinating ahead-of-their-time badass.

For example it makes no effort to give a sense of the vocabulary or pattern of speech of its time.

A deliberate choice by the author, she writes about it here

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303459004577363...

A writer must broker a compromise between then and now, and choose a plain style that can be adapted to different characters: not just to their ages and personalities and intelligence level, but to their place in life. I use modern English but shift it sideways a little, so that there are some unusual words, some Tudor rhythms, a suggestion of otherness

Yes, but to my view, a boring, and stylistically dull choice.

Fair enough

I suspect there is a general sense among people that critical events took place behind closed doors during the 20th century, and this historical fiction mini-fad is an attempt to revisit the narratives and retell them with a more modern understanding. Case in point, the HBO series "Lovecraft Country" is not Lovecraft or horror at all, it is on purpose abusing horror to illustrate to the audience the nature of normalized racial abuse.

1969-2004 was the golden age ;-)

When Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey–Maturin series (super fun to read) was being written.

I adore alternative history. In vid form, there's never been more of it. Better still, it's being infused with the superior storytelling & production that's marked the last 10 years or so.

Movies/shows are finally living up to the hype of the last 50 years.

Aren't we going through a golden age of all types of fiction right now?

I'd say it's about individualized discovery and recommendation allowing the balkanization of interests.

There are many subreddits with this theme:

/r/AlternateHistory/ /r/HistoricalWhatIf/ /r/worldbuilding/ /r/FutureWhatIf/

Thats more or less the opposite of what the article means by 'historical fiction'

One superficial guess is that comes to mind immediately is that research got easier for authors with search engines compared to the intensive old library archives primary sources involved before. It would lower the barrier but wouldn't account for motivation.

In The Name of the Rose was a difficult read that called for a guide book but it gave a great sense of "we have been here before" in "echoes" of precursors like heresies which were largely separated from the Protestant Reformation's success from lack of backing and Dulcinians who essentially were eerily similiar to Communists before Marx but without the benefit of rifles to surplant knights and lacked the athiesm of course.

It’s all for Baroque Cycle (Neil Stephenson) and Young Indiana Jones for me.

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