So... I'm not really sure where I stand on these discussions we're having in class. The whole idea of the blurry line between fiction and history is kind of complicated for me, and it seems like every time someone presents evidence against that idea, it can easily be spun to support it. It just depends on how you look at it, and I guess that conclusion is kind of bothering me.
Sometimes I just like it when things are absolute, when there's a clear dividing line between what you can and cannot do when it comes to history or a novel. But... Doctorow kind of broke me of that somehow. His subtle critique of the early 1900s was a brilliant shock to my system, but now I'm struggling with this internal argument over whether or not I like what he's doing. In my earlier posts I think I did, but after reading "False Documents" and the small snippet of that interview, I feel like Doctorow is more arguing for the idea that there is no line between history and fiction and he can kind of do what he wants no matter the consequences.
And I'm just not sure I'm comfortable with that anymore. I like what he did with it in his novel. I thought the things he did with Morgan and Ford were so brilliant -- I mean, how can we really know if that happened or not? While discussing the reactions the Ford historical society had, I was of the mind that they were being kind of silly. It's just a book, and it's not like Doctorow did it in a malicious way. It kind of seemed to me that after he wrote it he kind of shrugged and said, "just sayin'."
In other words, I like the way he uses history and fiction in the novel. They compliment each other nicely. But the idea in general that there is no line between history and fiction, that "there is no truth!" as Mr. Mitchell would say and wave his hands in the air, is kind of weird to me. As someone who's fond of history and who wrote their painfully tedious historiographical essay, I'm familiar with historical bias. It's just a natural part of the subject, and it can even help tell the story in some cases. And as someone who's a lover of fiction, I know that sometimes what's written in a novel can be even truer and more powerful than history can, but to say that nothing stands between them can be so dangerous!
I'm kind of a middle of the road person in life, and I guess that's where I am here too. I don't think there's a clear line between history and fiction. I don't think there's no line either. I think there's overlap, but we shouldn't get carried away with our overlap. I think someone said that was like giving the man who denies the Holocaust complete license to do so, which just doesn't seem right.
1 comment:
It certainly doesn't seem right to allow the Holocaust-denier (or any along a range of offensive revisionists) license to say whatever they want under the "history is fiction" banner. But I'd argue that White and Doctorow both are not allowing for such a possibility: a historical novel, along the lines of Doctorow's, that presented a narrative of the 1930s in Germany that depicted a Jewish conspiracy to malign the German people with a scurrilous and false story of concentration camps would be condemned along the same basic lines that such a "history" would: as a false, irresponsible, and malicious revision of the past. We wouldn't say, "Well, it's just a novel, so it doesn't matter." Maybe the author "made it up," but we'd still find its real-world implications offensive and also false.
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