tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-240963482024-03-05T01:26:19.435-05:00Dime Store HistoryPutting the story back in history.AJThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16449289556284721180noreply@blogger.comBlogger84125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24096348.post-34060440514276092542007-11-21T09:09:00.000-05:002007-11-21T09:34:43.936-05:00Beowulf - The MovieSo I saw Beowulf last week. (What, you want timely? This is a history blog. Timely is not a priority.) I had been threatening to drag my wife to it for weeks, and every time I did, she would threaten to drag me to some Jane Austen Knitting Club movie in retaliation, until we were sitting in a Barnes and Noble coffee shop across from a Beowulf book display, and the following conversation occurred:<br /><br />HER: Why didn't you tell me that <a href="http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2005/01/astonishingly-professional-post-for.asp">Neil Gaiman wrote the screenplay</a>?<br />ME: I'm pretty sure I did.<br />HER: No, you would just point and say "I'm dragging you to see that."<br />ME: Well, it's been mentioned in every single ad.<br />HER: We could go this weekend.<br /><br />(Postscript: my wife went home and watched the trailers. Contrary to what I led her to believe, there is no booming voice that says "Screenplay by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary." But, you know, the credits were still there.)<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8JXfB6_IiRq7mFDVZxy0KknHBp25jotwqSxQQBKsULeRSSNBzjJeJ9ndSAralwv4cIlwYP1uOVDwlEyHgDaMT3WBPWzsvuRgvOcirGT3k6XPnplkamw6cjwLHSttsFYQKYh0cVQ/s1600-h/660558.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8JXfB6_IiRq7mFDVZxy0KknHBp25jotwqSxQQBKsULeRSSNBzjJeJ9ndSAralwv4cIlwYP1uOVDwlEyHgDaMT3WBPWzsvuRgvOcirGT3k6XPnplkamw6cjwLHSttsFYQKYh0cVQ/s320/660558.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5135300216687434690" border="0" /></a> <span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" >(He will kill your monster ...)</span><br /></div><br />A friend who came with us called it "Monty Python on steroids." Me, I'm still cogitating. I liked it. I liked it a lot. The story moved, the actors were excellent, and the 3-D got oohs and aahhs. But there was a lot going on. It was animated, basically. Motion capture of live action, but every frame had clearly been computer-generated. And I don't know why, but I really thought that helped the tone. This is basically a big, gory fairy tale. If it had been live-action, it would have lost a little of the fairy-tale quality. If it had been more Shreklike, it would have been harder to take the mature content seriously. (As was, I think some of the audience had a hard time downshifting from the comic first act to the tragic third act.)<br /><br />The plot took quite a few liberties with the poem. (It had to, if it were going to be filmable.) What I was impressed by was how Gaiman and Avary kept so many of the main elements (Grendel, Grendel's mother, the dragon), and played with the minor elements to make it a more unified story. In the poem, for example, Wiglaf is only around at the end, for the dragon parts. In the film, he's Beowulf's loyal sidekick. It worked. While the poem takes the approach "There was this guy Beowulf, and this is what happened to him," the film adds a few things in on the margins to give his story (I can't believe I'm saying this) an emotional arc -- gloryhound makes good, maybe, before dying violently. (This spoils nothing. The movie's been out for a week, the poem for more than a thousand years.) <br /><br />My wife, who is far more literate than I (she's read the poem, in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English#Beowulf">Olde Englishe</a>), assures me that several plot elements were lifted from <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Grendel-John-Gardner/dp/0679723110">John Gardner's Grendel</a>, which I have on my "To-Read" shelf. Guess that will come down sooner rather than later. Meantime, I'm working my way through the poem (which I have never been able to finish). More on that when I do.AJThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16449289556284721180noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24096348.post-45221642202283447462007-11-20T22:32:00.000-05:002007-11-20T22:56:23.993-05:00You Can't Make This Stuff Up: Chevalier St. Georges<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZJqBmj1yJy-WBcPaLe_plbi-puM1dfuHITOdGjM-8qBsWlBTWNLBCvUJpJX_znGsAl2Vs5uHsJyqc2JHcB-TtXlTHapnKPfzL6t9CArUVznG9X_G9ooQT6dxRyGx-kHeuApyhQQ/s1600-h/images.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 131px; height: 182px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZJqBmj1yJy-WBcPaLe_plbi-puM1dfuHITOdGjM-8qBsWlBTWNLBCvUJpJX_znGsAl2Vs5uHsJyqc2JHcB-TtXlTHapnKPfzL6t9CArUVznG9X_G9ooQT6dxRyGx-kHeuApyhQQ/s320/images.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5135134362230332338" border="0" /></a><br />Quick quiz. The man depicted above:<br /><br />(a) wrote six operas in the late eighteenth century, including one on which he collaborated with Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, of <span style="font-style: italic;">Dangerous Liaisons</span> fame;<br />(b) founded the Society of the Friends of the Blacks, dedicated to eradicating slavery;<br />(c) was the most celebrated pupil of the Tessier de la Boessiere fencing academy;<br />(d) once threw a exhibition fencing match to the Chevalier d'Eon, a former spy who, after a stint in Russia disguised as a woman, spent the rest of his life as a transvestite. <br /><br />The answer is "(e)," all of the above. I love it when it's all of the above. <br /><br />The Chevalier on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevalier_de_Saint-Georges">Wikipedia</a>. <br /><br />More <a href="http://chevalierdesaintgeorges.homestead.com/Page1.html">here</a>.<br /><br /><br />And, of course, <a href="http://www.chevalierdesaintgeorge.com/">soon to be a major motion picture</a>.AJThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16449289556284721180noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24096348.post-30128510753833145542007-03-16T21:56:00.000-04:002007-03-16T22:04:56.981-04:00Sontag on Story ShapeIt's late, and I haven't posted yet, so I'm going for an easy link entry tonight. The Guardian has <a href="http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2035857,00.html">never-before-published essay</a> by Susan Sontag that has this little bit in it:<br /><blockquote>The pleasure of fiction is precisely that it moves to an ending. A novel is a world with borders. For there to be completeness, unity, coherence, there must be borders. Everything is relevant in the journey we take within those borders. One could describe the story's end as a point of magical convergence for the shifting preparatory views: a fixed position from which the reader sees how initially disparate things finally belong together.</blockquote>I was going to say that this suggests one difference between history and historical fiction -- that one tries to bring things together, and the other doesn't. But that's not really true. Good history can do what Sontag describes. Bad novels don't. So I'll let this nag at me some more. Now it can nag at you, too.AJThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16449289556284721180noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24096348.post-38489816298403072762007-03-15T06:49:00.000-04:002007-03-15T07:08:38.135-04:00Soft idiot softlyAnd now, your moment of highbrow high concept for the week:<br /><br /><a href="http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25338-2622781,00.html">WH Auden may have helped Guy Burgess flee Britain for the Soviet Union</a> back in 1951. <br /><br />It doesn't look like it was intentional. Burgess, looking for cover for his escape, tried to get himself invited to Auden's new home in Ichia, Naples. (Burgess and Auden were both gay, and had a passing acquaintance.) When he called the friends Auden was staying with, Auden was too drunk to answer. Somehow, the phone calls became public knowledge, and MI6 wound up interrogating Auden. <br /><br />Just imagine: one of England's most famous poets gets questioned about his role in helping one of England's most notorious spies flee the country. How nerve-wracking would that be for a closeted gay man in the 1950s?AJThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16449289556284721180noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24096348.post-10841473181344783082007-03-14T07:14:00.000-04:002007-03-14T07:38:38.195-04:00... 299 ...<span style="font-size:100%;">A tiny bit of 300 followup, from BBC News. Some Iranian government officials and newspapers are protesting that the movie is "<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6446183.stm">psychological warfare</a>."<br /></span><p> <span style="font-size:100%;"></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-size:100%;">Javad Shamqadri, a cultural advisor to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said it was "plundering Iran's historic past and insulting this civilization".</span><br /></p><p>He branded the film "psychological warfare" against Tehran and its people.</p><p><span style="font-size:100%;">...</span></p><span style="font-size:100%;">Daily newspaper Ayandeh-No carried the headline "Hollywood declares war on Iranians".</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br />The paper said: "It seeks to tell people that Iran, which is in the Axis of Evil now, has for long been the source of evil and modern Iranians' ancestors are the ugly murderous dumb savages you see in 300."</span></blockquote><span style="font-size:100%;"></span>Can't say this is a surprise, or even that it's unfounded. (I do think Shamqadri may have meant "propaganda," though. Psychological warfare presupposes the movie will get wide distribution in Iran.) For example, the BBC article runs a photo of a Spartan fighting one of the Persian immortals. Students of history know the Immortals as the Persian imperial guard, which served as an infantry unit at both Marathon and Thermopylae. Viewers of 300 know the Immortals as the Masked Persian Zombie Ninjas that attack right before the elephants and the rhinoceros.AJThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16449289556284721180noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24096348.post-62523040560243800682007-03-13T20:33:00.000-04:002007-03-13T20:44:39.886-04:00Free Story Idea: The Anglo-French Republic<a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19990">From the latest <span style="font-style: italic;">New York Review of Books</span></a> (which, clearly, got it from the <span style="font-style: italic;">Guardian</span> when I wasn't looking):<br /><blockquote>In January, a government document was discovered in the British national archives which, according to the <i>Guardian</i> newspaper, "shocked historians." This was the note, dated September 28, 1956, of a meeting in London between the British prime minister, the conservative and Francophile Anthony Eden, and his French equivalent, the socialist and Anglophile Guy Mollet—one of those rare encounters when two premiers spoke each other's language both fluently and willingly. ... [A]t this rare moment of concord, Mollet suggested that the two countries unite; or, if not that, then at least France join the Commonwealth. The British note shows that Eden recommended "immediate consideration" of the latter idea; also that Mollet "had not thought there need be difficulty over France accepting the headship of Her Majesty; [and] that the French would welcome a common citizenship arrangement on an Irish basis."</blockquote>There's the basis for an interesting alternate history. What would the past fifty years have looked like if Mollet and Eden had tried for unification? <br /><br />The <span style="font-style: italic;">Review</span> notes that the "British treated it as a jokey what-if, speculating on amalgamated soccer teams and the possibly improved quality of croissants in British shops." <br /><br />Forget if it was successful. What if the countries had tried it, and it failed?AJThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16449289556284721180noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24096348.post-12382530928042669552007-03-12T22:21:00.000-04:002007-03-12T22:24:43.751-04:00Women OnstageFrom the <a href="http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25352-2617402,00.html">Times Literary Supplement</a>, a review article on women's roles onstage since the Restoration:<br /><blockquote>If we are to change the way that theatre women are included in today’s stories, we must attend to how they have been marginalised in the stories of the past.</blockquote>The article is mainly focused on the business end of the theater, which, frankly, makes it even more interesting.AJThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16449289556284721180noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24096348.post-32282261670300423502007-03-11T10:17:00.000-04:002007-03-11T10:37:32.555-04:00Clockpunk(via <a href="http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=3897">Warren Ellis</a>)<br /><br /><a href="http://davinciautomata.wordpress.com/">Clockpunk</a> is the new name for alternate history stories that take place in a world where the Renaissance yielded more technological innovation than ours did. (I'm assuming, from the few writeups I've seen so far, that the soon-to-be-cliched premise of much of this fiction will be <a href="http://davinciautomata.wordpress.com/2007/03/11/the-memory-cathedral/">"What if we had listened to Da Vinci?"</a>) <br /><br />The term appears to <a href="http://www.hjo3.net/gurps/random.htm">derive from an old role-playing-game manual</a>, and the term may have referred to <a href="http://groups.google.ca/group/rec.arts.sf.written/browse_frm/thread/ff729bf206daba41/b22c3dee07ec5d78?lnk=st&q=clockpunk+nicoll&rnum=1#b22c3dee07ec5d78">something else entirely</a> at one point.<br /><br />The new blog devoted to this Renaissance strain of clockpunk -- <a href="http://davinciautomata.wordpress.com/2007/03/03/introducing-clockpunk/">The Da Vinci Automata</a> -- seems interesting enough so far. But, so far, it also seems more an <a href="http://jaylake.livejournal.com/957517.html">attempt to create a subgenre around a label</a> than a recognition of an actual literary movement within either science or historical fiction. (For example, click on the "<a href="http://davinciautomata.wordpress.com/clockpunk-bibliography/">Bibliography</a>" at DVA, and all you'll see is "To be added soon.") <br /><br />Still, I'll keep an eye out. Good alternate history can be fascinating, and it's possible the Da Vinci Automata will point out some solid stories that would otherwise get overlooked.AJThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16449289556284721180noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24096348.post-23240714387158030282007-03-10T17:21:00.000-05:002007-03-11T12:39:07.957-04:00History and Film: 300The good news is, it was just about what I expected it to be. Awkward hard-boiled bon mots, gloriously over-the-top violence, computer-generated rhinoceri. The trailer did not lie.<br /><br />Historically, this movie was nowhere close to accurate, but if you're going to a movie about ancient Sparta where the poster looks like it's advertising a heavy metal concert, what were you expecting? Among other things, the movie tries to cast the <a href="http://ancienthistory.about.com/cs/greecehellas1/g/helots.htm">helot-owning Spartans</a> as the champions of freedom, and has a plot point turn on the queen's alleged adultery, despite the fact that <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=qD52w0RFmFcC&pg=RA1-PA433&lpg=RA1-PA433&dq=sparta+extramarital&source=web&ots=gke1OFC3KD&sig=eFjsAaFQezyg-L6uXtGBsT1tTqk">extramarital sex was not particularly scandalous in Sparta</a>.<br /><br />But the biggest problem, from a storytelling standpoint, was that the script allowed the foregone conclusion (the 300 Spartans die) to rob the story of any tension. Up until the moment they die, none of the Spartans surrender. None of them even consider surrendering. And none of them lose at hand-to-hand combat. Which means that most of the scenes are just a repeat of the Spartans facing a threat, dispatching it handily, and then reaffirming that no, they're still not surrendering. It's too bad, the last thing I expected was that the battle scenes would get boring.AJThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16449289556284721180noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24096348.post-55263035069903063242007-03-09T08:09:00.000-05:002007-03-09T08:19:46.225-05:00303 ... 302 ... 301 ...Going to see <a href="http://300themovie.warnerbros.com/"><span style="font-style: italic;">300</span></a> tonight.<br /><br />It looks <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">gloriously</span> bad.<br /><br />There will be a full report later.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size:85%;">(also, </span></span><span style="font-size:85%;">Rome <span style="font-style: italic;">reviews to resume shortly)</span></span>AJThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16449289556284721180noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24096348.post-29506540085629651612007-01-15T22:29:00.000-05:002007-01-15T22:53:50.453-05:00Rome - "Passover"<blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;">"Sorry about your uncle."</span><br /> <span style="font-style: italic;">"I'm made his son, by will."</span><br /> <span style="font-style: italic;">"Oh, congratulations. You'll be wanting vengeance, then."</span><br /> <span style="font-style: italic;">Titus Pullo and Octavian. </span> </blockquote>The new season of <span style="font-style: italic;">Rome</span> is finally here, which makes me a little giddy, since it's one of the few shows that bothers to dramatize history, and since it does it so well. I'd been thinking about how it manages to create an ancient Rome that feels so convincing, without bogging the viewer down in detail. Tonight, at least, two things pop out: violence and ritual. <br />The violence in <span style="font-style: italic;">Rome</span> is brutal and casual. (As opposed to the violence in Deadwood, which, while brutal and common, was usually accompanied by somber lighting and that plucked-string score that heralded major events.) As a result, it leaves the feeling that violence, while serious, was something that ancient Romans lived with every day. What makes pieces of violence noteworthy on the show are their meanings to the characters. Caesar's death is worth paying attention to because it has an immediate impact on a number of lives. The manner of his death is noteworthy primarily because it occurred in the Senate chamber. Alex Epstein of the screenwriting blog <span style="font-style: italic;">Complications Ensue</span> <a href="http://complicationsensue.blogspot.com/2007/01/brave-writing.html">has already made this point well about the first season</a>, particularly about how the writing frequently makes violence the second most important thing in the scene to the characters. <br />But the other thing that Rome does well is its use of ritual. Dropping in rituals that advance the story but still seem foreign to modern viewers help to create a different world very effectively without slowing down the story. Sometimes, these rituals are set pieces, like the twin funerals in this episode. Other times, they're just snatches of dialogue or actorly business. Titus Pullo marries his former slave by asking, and then marking her forehead. Attia, when planning to flee the city, barks a quick "Pack the money and the household gods." The script doesn't dwell on the exotic moments, and neither do the actors, and it's that ruthless efficiency that sells the difference so well.AJThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16449289556284721180noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24096348.post-80788210544190522202006-10-01T16:22:00.000-04:002006-10-01T17:05:58.048-04:00Sunday at Borders - 1 October 2006New and reviewed this week in history and historical fiction:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Historical Fiction</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">House of Meetings, </span>by Martin Amis, <a href="http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25339-2377673,00.html">reviewed by Bharat Tandon in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Times Literary Supplement</span></a>, <a href="http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/reviews/article1778362.ece">by Tim Martin in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Independent</span></a>, and <a href="http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story/0,,1884004,00.html">by M John Harrison in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Guardian</span></a>. Martin Amis shifts tone to write about the Soviet gulag -- or does he? Tandon thinks he hit his mark by adopting a more restrained style; Tim Martin thinks it sounds too much like a Martin Amis self-parody; Harrison thinks that the style "opens us into the central irony of most Amis novels, in which the issue of storytelling is always the issue of character, of self-interest and nuanced self-deception - narrative as the filthy Nabokovian stream from which the reader, like a shit-eater at the bottom of the labour camp food chain, must filter moral sustenance," which, I think, puts him in Martin's camp. <br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br />Thirteen Moons</span>, by Charles Frazier, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/28/AR2006092801404.html">reviewed by Jonathan Yardley in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Washington Post</span></a>. Yardley thinks Frazier is overrated, and his latest is "corny" and "will be putting a lot of people to sleep." At that point, does it really matter what it's about?<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">On Agate Hill</span>, by Lee Smith, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/28/AR2006092801462.html">reviewed by Donna Rifkind in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Washington Post</span></a>. Oh look, another post-Civil War novel -- this time, it's about a girl coming of age in 1880s Appalchia. Rifkind singles out the way that Smith has "invented artifacts" to tell the story -- maybe it's the first time she's run across it. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">History</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"All Governments Lie": The Life and Times of Rebel Journalist I.F. Stone</span>, by Myra MacPherson, reviewed by Paul Berman in the <span style="font-style: italic;">New York Times</span>. I.F. Stone was a journalist who debunked press coverage of the Vietnam war; he also may or may not have been a Soviet stooge. Berman thinks MacPherson's zealous defense of the man may have hurt him more than it helped him. <br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Liberty</span>, by Lucy Moore, <a href="http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/reviews/article1778364.ece">reviewed by Marianne Brace in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Independent</span></a>. Moore has written six portraits of women who lived through the French Revolution. Brace calls it a "lively narrative full of pungent details."AJThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16449289556284721180noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24096348.post-27290077105633517832006-09-28T05:44:00.000-04:002006-09-28T05:53:27.523-04:00More Emma DarwinLeaving aside a few fatuous observations by the interviewer (she's just learned about this new "buzz term" historical fiction, "it's so hot right now ..."), <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/arts/articulate/200609/s1750430.htm">another interesting interview</a> with <a href="http://www.emmadarwin.com/">Emma Darwin</a>. I'm going to have to pick up <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mathematics-Love-Emma-Darwin/dp/0755330625/sr=8-1/qid=1159437095/ref=pd_ka_1/026-2642715-8491657?ie=UTF8&s=books">her book</a> soon. If Darwin writes half as well as she thinks about writing, it should be great. For example:<br /><blockquote>I usually do basic research first, to establish that I can do what I want to do. Then I write the first draft without stopping to find things out more than I absolutely have to. Then I have a manuscript and a pile of notes for more research. That's often when I'll try to travel to places I need to, partly to get that authenticity, and partly because you stumble across things you wouldn't have known to look for. But you have to get beyond the research, or your novel turns into a ghastly kind of history-book-with-dialogue.</blockquote>Plus, anyone willing to say that Charles Darwin is too well-traveled a historical topic to write about right now gets huge points from me. Redeemable for what, I don't know ...AJThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16449289556284721180noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24096348.post-5878901384348068342006-09-27T05:25:00.000-04:002006-09-27T05:29:14.441-04:00HistFiction.netI'm in the middle of revising how I handle this site a little. Expect some small (but, to me, significant) changes come October. But I don't want to leave the blog dead in the meantime. So, a little linkblogging. Today, <a href="http://www.histfiction.net/hfsites.php">HistFiction.net</a>, which seems to be a decent collection of links about historical fiction. While I'm not crazy about the lack of diverse categories, I'm willing to chalk that up to two factors:<br />(1) There may not be that many other historical fiction sites. <br />(2) These links are not a bad snapshot of how people think of historical fiction. <br />So click over, and do a little exploring.AJThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16449289556284721180noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24096348.post-27975174182238638102006-09-24T12:01:00.000-04:002006-09-24T12:30:41.775-04:00Sunday at Borders - 24 September 2006It's a light week this week. So, without further ado, new and reviewed this week in history and historical fiction:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Historical Fiction</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Imperium</span>, by Robert Harris, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/21/AR2006092101325.html">reviewed by Dennis Drabelle for the <span style="font-style: italic;">Washington Post</span></a>. "I could have used this book while taking third-year Latin," says the reviewer (halfway through this myself, I know how he feels). Harris hits the high points of Cicero's career, but fills in lots of juicy backstory about just how the conspiracies and prosecutions that led to his great speeches happened -- it's inside baseball for high-school classics students, and I mean that in a good way. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">History</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Donne: The reformed soul</span>, by John Stubbs, <a href="http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25336-2366922,00.html">reviewed by Katherine Duncan-Jones in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Times Literary Supplement</span></a>. Donne has pretty much defied biographers, says Duncan-Jones. Which makes it all the more remarkable that Stubbs has "completed a substantial and lively account of Donne's life and times ..."<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Consuming Passions: Leisure and pleasure in Victorian Britain</span>, by Judith Flanders, <a href="http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25340-2367306,00.html">reviewed by Rosemary Ashton in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Times Literary Supplement</span></a>. This isn't the first historical account of leisure, but the angle (that increased leisure time and funds were spin-offs from the Industrial Revolution) feels fresh. Of course, since it's a British history, it wouldn't be complete without some account of class conflict; at least this time it's relevant. <br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million</span>, by Daniel Mendelsohn, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/24/books/review/Rosenbaum.t.html?_r=1&ref=books&oref=slogin">reviewed by Ron Rosenbaum for the <span style="font-style: italic;">New York Times</span></a>. I have to admit, my first reaction on seeing this review was "not another Holocaust book," but Rosenbaum points out a few things that turned me around. Mendelsohn is an interesting and careful scholar who writes on a number of subjects, and his book appears to eschew a number Holocaust cliches (like "backshadowing" -- making lives seem tragic in light of the coming Holocaust) in favor of reconstructing the fate of a single family.AJThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16449289556284721180noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24096348.post-16439066356385987812006-09-20T20:16:00.000-04:002006-09-20T20:45:21.294-04:00Graphic History: Chicken with PlumsThis is a first, because the English-language version of this graphic novel (the original French edition, Poulet aux Prunes, was published in 2004) hasn't come out yet, and won't until October 2. Pantheon Books sent out advance copies to graphic novel reviewers, and and the fact that I can occasionally be mistaken for one delights me to no end.<br /><br />[and once again, Blogger Beta is having trouble with images]<br /><br /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Chicken-Plums-Marjane-Satrapi/dp/0375424156"><span style="font-style: italic;">Chicken with Plums</span></a> is by Marjane Satrapi, author of the excellent <span style="font-style: italic;">Persepolis</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Persepolis 2</span>. It's the story of her great-uncle Nasser Ali Khan, a musician who, in 1958, suffered the loss of his favorite tar, and died of a broken heart eight days later. The graphic novel covers those eight days. Since it hasn't been released yet, I am going to go really light on anything that might be considered a spoiler. And I'm simply going to say that, while I thought both Persepolis graphic novels were excellent, I thought this surpassed them both. Buy it. You won't regret it. <br /><br />Small observations:<br /><ul> <li>The history is worn lightly. Satrapi doesn't shy away from referring to events or people that her Western audience won't know offhand, and that adds to the verisimilitude. Rather than stopping the narrative for explanations, she just drops footnotes, which works better in graphic novels than it does in prose. <br /> </li> <li>Satrapi also plays a lot with chronology. The events of the book take place over eight days, but flashbacks (occasionally repeated) provide context and add layers to interactions we've already witnessed. In many ways, she has structured this like a murder mystery, even though we are watching the death as it happens. <br /> </li> <li>The linework is deceptively simple, and the backgrounds (the set dressing of comics) are minimal. Each detail Satrapi does use is telling enough that the end result is more powerful than if she had laden her backgrounds with endless Easter eggs.</li> <li>Like most great historical fiction (and this is historical fiction in the loosest sense -- it's necessarily a fictionalized account of her family, and it takes place before she was born), <span style="font-style: italic;">Chicken with Plums</span> plays with interpretation. We watch the events that lead up to Nasser Ali Khan's death, but she wisely doles out information sparingly, so we don't really understand them until the end of the story. It's the things no one bothers to tell each other that are most important to Nasser Ali Khan's motives. <br /> </li> </ul> Overall, just an outstanding piece of work. Highly recommended.AJThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16449289556284721180noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24096348.post-28800186865942306472006-09-19T22:38:00.000-04:002006-09-19T22:41:28.192-04:00And Still More Black DahliaBecause it's late, and I'm tired ...<br /><br />Slate's Seth Mnookin on <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2149680">why people seem so fascinated by the Black Dahlia murder</a>. (Hint: It's Ellroy's fault.) A sample:<br /><p><em></em><blockquote><em>The Black Dahlia</em> is, with its overlapping themes of obsession, sublimated lust, revenge, trust, and incest, the most personally revealing of Ellroy's novels. It transformed the murky facts surrounding Short's life and death into art, the unknown "dead white woman" becoming a tabula rasa on which the author could wrestle with his anger and affection toward his mother. ... Ellroy's book introduced the paradigm of Short as an unknowable Everywoman to a new generation.</blockquote> </p> I kind of buy it. The Dahlia murder was kind of a train wreck, and it was amplified by Ellroy's own issues, as well as his ample writing talent.AJThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16449289556284721180noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24096348.post-88897076646306519812006-09-17T06:26:00.000-04:002006-09-17T06:42:47.070-04:00Sunday at Borders - 17 Sept 2006New and reviewed this week:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Historical Fiction</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The Translation of Dr. Appelles</span>, by David Treuer, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/14/AR2006091401231.html">reviewed by Brian Hall in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Washington Post</span></a>. Treuer's novel covers a pair of parallel love stories: a modern one about a forlorn translator and a college librarian and an early 19th-century one about a pair of foundlings rescued by an unnamed (in the review) Indian tribe. The focus on the translator sounds interesting -- if only Hall weren't so convinced the majority of us great unwashed won't like the book as much as he did.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The Fall of Troy</span>, by Peter Ackroyd, <a href="http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/reviews/article1603819.ece">reviewed by Sue Gaisford in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Independent</span></a>. A "lurid and generally entertaining drama" that's "packed full to bursting with extreme and supernatural occurences." Oh yeah, it's about a fictionalized version of Heinrich Schliemann, the man who supposedly discovered Troy. <br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The Meaning of Night</span>, by Michael Cox, <a href="http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/reviews/article1603823.ece">reviewed by Christian House in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Independent</span></a>. House thinks this "600-page Victorian murder mystery pastiche" is "an unadulterated pleasure." My guess is that people who like this sort of thing will like this particular version of this sort of thing. <br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Zoli</span>, by Colum McCann, reviewed by Ed Wood in the <a href="http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/reviews/article1603826.ece">Independent</a>. A novel about "the rise and decline of a Romani singer and poet" in Iron-Curtain Poland. Wood thinks it's ambitious, but doesn't quite hit. <br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">History</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Five Germanies I Have Known</span>, by Fritz Stern, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/14/AR2006091401322.html">reviewed by Anne Applebaum in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Washington Post</span></a>. The renowned German Historian (Blood and Iron) tells a more personal history of Germany. Unlike Grass's controversial new memoir, there are no surprise revelations about the Waffen SS, but that doesn't mean there are no surprises.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">LBJ: Architect of American Ambition</span>, by Randall Woods, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/14/AR2006091401310.html">reviewed by Nick Kotz in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Washington Post</span></a>. I've reviewed this one before, but Kotz seems to like it. He cites its balance and "nuanced sense of Southern politics" as its greatest strengths, and a series of "minor errors" as its biggest weakness.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Bad Faith: A Forgotten History of Family, Fatherland and Vichy France</span>, by Carmen Callil, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/books/review/Caldwell.t.html?_r=1&ref=review&oref=slogin">reviewed by Christopher Caldwell in the <span style="font-style: italic;">New York Times</span></a>. Louis Darquier, one of the architects of the Vichy government in France, sounds like a twisted, real-life version of Casablanbca's Captain Renault. But the real story here is apparently why Callil decided to write the book in the first place: when her psychiatrist committed suicide, she turned out to be Darquier's abandoned daughter.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> The Lost Men</span>, by Kelly Tyler-Lewis, <a href="http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/reviews/article1603821.ece">reviewed by Magnus Mills in the<span style="font-style: italic;"> Independent</span></a>. Another book about Shackleton, who explored Antarctica. This one, though, focuses more on the Ross Sea party, left behind while Shackleton ventured out on the continent. <br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The Long Exile</span>, by Melanie McGrath, <a href="http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/history/0,,1874063,00.html">reviewed by Edward Marriott in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Guardian</span></a>. In the 1950s, Canada convinced a number of Inuit to resettle from the Hudson Bay to Ellesmere Island in the Polar Arctic -- when they found out they'd been lured to a dark, barren land under falser pretenses, the Inuit asked to return, and were refused. I'll be seeking this one out.AJThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16449289556284721180noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24096348.post-52182037982300259652006-09-16T06:49:00.000-04:002006-09-16T06:52:07.392-04:00Philippa Gregory on Historical FictionThe Boston Globe has a (brief) <a href="http://www.boston.com/ae/celebrity/articles/2006/09/15/writing_royalties/">interview with Philippa Gregory</a>:<br /><blockquote>The way I write historical novels is that I research and research so that I could write a book of straight history. Then I put my novelist hat on and inhabit the private life of these people until I can convey the feeling to the reader that they are really there. All characters are at one level unknowable, all you can do is look at their actions. But I haven't received any criticism.</blockquote>AJThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16449289556284721180noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24096348.post-69055862868128212812006-09-15T17:13:00.000-04:002006-09-15T17:19:08.628-04:00Black Dahlia - Followup<a href="http://www.moviesonline.ca/movienews_9908.html">An interview with Ellroy and Friedman</a>. There's one bit that caught my attention:<br /><blockquote></blockquote><blockquote>His language is so lush. Josh was a very good barometer of what you could and couldn’t do with his work. He lived and breathed Ellroy’s complex, dark material for a decade, forcing the material into Ellroy-ese, never taking the simple route.</blockquote> <blockquote></blockquote>That explains one of the things that felt wrong to me. Too much voice-over, which led to that ponderous, choreographed feel. (<span style="font-style: italic;">LA Confidential</span> had some of it, but it was punchier, playing as cribbed newspaper copy.)<br /><br />Also, despite Ellroy's protests here, he has propounded at least one theory before. It was in an documentary.<span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span></span>Pretty sure <a href="http://www.modestyarbor.com/feast.html">this was the one</a>.AJThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16449289556284721180noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24096348.post-55797645830700453042006-09-15T16:44:00.000-04:002006-09-15T17:09:08.673-04:00History and Film: The Black DahliaJust came back from watching. Overall, I liked it better than I was expecting to. If you forget the studio is trying to market it as a star-studded epic followup to LA Confidential and just treat it on its own terms, it works reasonably well. A few quick comments:<br /><ul> <li>Ellroy (and Friedman) were smart. The Dahlia murder (an actual event) is a framework, but this does not purport to be the "real" explanation of how it happened. (I saw a documentary last year on Ellroy, in which he -- drunk and BSing with some off-duty cops -- lays out what he thinks actually happened. This isn't it.) As a result, the writers can get away with a lot more dramatic tightness. For example, Ebert's Law of Economy of Characters winds up applying, without feeling overly forced. If this were more docudrama in feel, that might not have worked. <br /> </li> <li>In fact, DePalma and Friedman (and maybe Ellroy as well, I have to confess, I haven't read the book yet) go to great effort to make <span style="font-style: italic;">The Black Dahlia</span> feel like a modern, historical version of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Big-Sleep-Raymond-Chandler/dp/0394758285/sr=8-1/qid=1158354012/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-9729122-5717700?ie=UTF8&s=books"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Big Sleep</span></a>. <br /> </li> <li>The writers were also smart enough to avoid making the real story about the Dahlia murder. Yeah, it's there in the background, and it serves as a great MacGuffin, but the real story is more of a twisted love polygon (it would be spoiling to say how many sides, not to mention damned difficult). <br /> </li> <li>There's some deft expository work in the beginning, tying in a <a href="http://www.riprense.com/Dailynewspageringer.htm">bond issue</a>, which you would expect to be dry, and making it a catalyst for the rest of the story. Side note: what is it about Los Angeles-based noir and municipal policy? Chinatown has water policy at its heart, this has a bond issue for policemen. You wouldn't think these would work, but they do. <br /> </li> <li>Not really a storytelling point, but: Aaron Eckhart is great in this. Intense, haunted, full of rough energy. He makes the scenes he's in. Sadly, Hartnett, Johanssen and Swank seem to know they're in a Hollywood film. And that's really the problem with the movie overall -- it knows it's a big studio film. DePalma tries too hard to be serious and elegiac, and more often comes off as choreographed. Eckhart, though, knows enough to not quite keep the beat. Next to the rest of the performances, he feels almost syncopated, and that works well for him. <br /> </li> </ul>AJThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16449289556284721180noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24096348.post-59410468284040466482006-09-14T05:19:00.000-04:002006-09-14T05:33:59.092-04:00Other Folks on Historical Fiction<a href="http://www2.townonline.com/weymouth/opinion/view.bg?articleid=572201">Rambling, kind of self-involved essay</a> 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:<br /><ul> <li>The <a href="http://www.historicalnovelsociety.org/">Historical Novel Society</a> (didn't know <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">that</span> existed) has a <a href="http://www.historicalnovelsociety.org/definition.htm">definition for historical fiction</a> -- 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. <br /> </li> <li>And, this point is pretty useful: "<span class="headline"><span class="bodyFont">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.'</span></span>" What follows from there is a pretty good discussion of one man's reading habits that rings pretty true. <br /> </li> <li>One thing I would love to see less of: using (1) <span style="font-style: italic;">The Da Vinci Code</span>, (2) <span style="font-style: italic;">The Historian</span>, 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. <br /> </li> <li>And, one other useful clearinghouse link: <a href="http://www.squidoo.com/readinghistoricalfiction">Historical Fiction at Squidoo</a>. <br /> </li> </ul> 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.AJThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16449289556284721180noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24096348.post-35813770634419591532006-09-13T21:41:00.000-04:002006-09-13T21:45:45.580-04:00Blame vampires.Ugh, <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2006-09-11-hist-fiction-success_x.htm">historical fiction is now a publishing trend</a>:<br /><blockquote>The colossal success last year of Elizabeth Kostova's <i>The Historian</i>, a novel that imagined the life of Dracula set against the background of numerous world events, has publishers hoping that book-buying consumers are hungry for more historical fiction.</blockquote>Leaving aside the bad sociology in this article, it's just a little depressing that an overhyped vampire thriller<span style="font-style: italic;"></span> is getting credited with the resurgence. Don't get me wrong. I like the genre, and I even find the occaional vampire novel amusing. But really, why do so many people flock to this subgenre?AJThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16449289556284721180noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24096348.post-27467868336002773592006-09-12T21:36:00.000-04:002006-09-12T21:37:17.046-04:00Historical Fiction Reviews<a href="http://dannyreviews.com/s/historical_fiction.html">Danny Yee</a> does a bunch of two-paragraph reviews of various historical novels. Worth checking out, in that "wonder what appeals to the audience" kind of way.AJThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16449289556284721180noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24096348.post-2819881218048019152006-09-11T21:10:00.000-04:002006-09-11T21:12:42.684-04:00Frost/Nixon in the West EndFrom the <a href="http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25352-2345455,00.html">TLS's review of <span style="font-style: italic;">Frost/Nixon</span></a>, playing in London's West End:<br /><blockquote>History as an account of past events is sometimes not enough for us: we are trained as an audience that likes to see dramas made out of crises. The Donmar’s production of Frost/Nixon revisits not the original Watergate political mini-series itself, but the attempt a few years afterward to bring closure to it with a series of interviews featuring the disgraced male lead.</blockquote>The premise sounds interesting. David Frost's career is slumping, so is Richard Nixon's pocketbook. Fate, and $600,000, brings them together for a series of interviews ...AJThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16449289556284721180noreply@blogger.com0