It’s not easy being misunderstood. I just want you to know that.
OK, so I’m not good at saying what I mean all the time. Let’s continue yesterday’s discussion here, since I can’t put all I need to say, or try to, in a comment.
To Meg Rosoff; I’m not talking about a ‘what if’ situation. I like them and they are fair game and all that.
I like alternate settings as well as the next witch. I don’t mind authors borrowing plots from other books or real events if you can’t come up with anything original. But the book I moaned about on Wednesday should have been written either as a fact book about an actual mission, or as an adventure that was almost, but not quite the same as the original one in real life.
Then I started thinking about The Three Musketeers as an example. Dumas wrote about real people like kings and cardinals, but his main characters were the fictional musketeers. Maybe Buckingham had an affair with the Queen of France. Maybe he didn’t. That kind of playing around with what someone might have done but most likely didn’t do, is normal fiction.
Thinking about later generations being upset at what’s been done to the memory of someone ‘great’ who achieved something special, I pondered what could be done to ruin the Resident IT Consultant’s ancestor Michael Faraday. You could write a book of fiction where someone else discovers Faraday’s cage, for example. But the best, and I think commonest, way of dealing with Faraday and his cage in fiction would be to let him have a young assistant as the main character, and to see Faraday through their eyes. I feel that’s what Theresa Breslin does in The Nostradamus Prophecy.
We were sitting around wondering if Anne Frank was a good example, but I suspect not. There could easily genuinely be ten girls in her situation, writing diaries which are found and published.
OK, how about this as an example? In fifty year’s time someone writes a novel about an author who writes a brilliant first novel called How I Live Now, and who wins awards for it, and takes up horse riding and goes around telling people to start blogs. Except in this novel the author is 23 and Italian and is not called Meg Rosoff.
I’m not getting it right, am I?
This isn’t libel, because the people originally involved are not mentioned or named. They should have been. Some are dead, but I believe that some are still alive. (I know I’m getting closer to giving things away.) They most likely won’t be reading a children’s book, but their grandchildren might. And what this novel says is that Granddad never did that heroic thing. It was really a bunch of children.
From what I hear from some of you who write fiction, editors often tell authors to change things. I’d like to know what this editor thought he/she was doing, letting this through.
If it’s a bad book, it won’t be read in a couple of years’ time (think Pearl Buck & China). And if it’s a good one, people will discuss why the writer changed things.
That’s too idealistic, Lee.
It’s clearly a subject lots of people get worked up about for lots of different reasons!
we all fictionalise real events, and don’t many kids (and not only kids) love to imagine themselves at the heart of a famous story? In the case you describe though, I guess the least the author could do is include a note stating that the book is based on a real event and has been changed to make history more accessible/make a better story/indulge a fantasy of being a hero [insert appropriate excuse] but in fact, here’s what really happened and who was really involved…
If some of these people are still alive, I’m amazed someone would write a book, novel or otherwise, about what they did without trying to speak to them (who knows, maybe the author did?). But then, I’ve got a journalist’s background.
I understand the author is a journalist.
Oh for god’s sake, witch. You’re almost as bad as Popbitch, which specializes in libel-avoidance by saying things like “which short A-list actor with floppy hair likes having sex with alsatians?” And I never have a clue who they’re talking about…..
You might have to come out of the closet and name names for this conversation to go further. Though my husband was cross about The Last Kind of Scotland, in which Idi Amin had a Scottish GP as his personal physician, who played a major role in his life, but didn’t actually exist. I disagreed with him, and thought it was an excellent way to get closer to history. But does this mean (particularly with my memory and my grasp of history) I’ll be looking for a biography of Idi Amin’s Scottish physician in ten years? Funny how this topic gets us all tied up in knots. And there is a fashion for faction these days. Have to admit I’d quite like being a 23 year old Italian, but maybe that’s not the point. Dammit.
Meg, my view exactly! This discussion, as I’ve already said, has become silly without discussing specifics. After all, most people accept Holocaust novels if well written (though I had some problems with the rather arch tone of Death in Zusak’s), and object to TBITSP because of how it’s written: the case by case, please!
And by the way, I’m probably one of the least idealistic people you’ll ever encounter. Most books currently or recently lauded will soon be forgotten – usually deservedly, though admittedly not always.