Other Folks on Historical Fiction

Rambling, kind of self-involved essay in a Boston-area paper about how to read historical fiction, but one that poses a couple of interesting questions, and makes a few interesting points. Namely:

• The Historical Novel Society (didn't know that existed) has a definition for historical fiction -- anything set more than fifty years in the past, or written before the author's lifetime. So Updike writing about his boyhood in the forties? Historical fiction. But so's a twenty-five year old writing about Watergate. I can accept that.
  
• And, this point is pretty useful: "What good is historical fiction then? It probably puts more non-historians in touch with history than non-fiction does. It's far better than traditional textbooks or stale historical accounts in giving history a 'neighborhood.'" What follows from there is a pretty good discussion of one man's reading habits that rings pretty true.
  
• One thing I would love to see less of: using (1) The Da Vinci Code, (2) The Historian, or (3) 9/11 or the War in Iraq as a reason why people are reading more historical fiction. Each is kind of easy, kind of cliched, and kind of wrong.
  
• And, one other useful clearinghouse link: Historical Fiction at Squidoo.
  

I never pretended to be the only one out there thinking about this stuff. So I'm glad forcing myself to think about this daily is showing me what else is out there.