Babel Clash

I’m really not trying to do a travelogue here but getting on to the Great Wall (at Mutianyu) in the year I released a book that frequently references it (I call it the Long Wall in Under Heaven) is pretty cool. I’ll also say, for the record, that the Sacred Way, approaching the Ming Dynasty Tombs is just beautiful. Serene, exquisite, elegant. We were there just at closing, and walked it pretty much alone with a reddened sun west, and it will be a lasting memory.

I wanted to talk about fantasy and history here. One of the arguments I’ve made is that when I spin a historical setting slightly to the fantastic (a quarter turn, as Robert Wiersema put it in a review) I believe I am showing respect for the actual events and people. I am not pretending I understand the characters of Justinian and Theodora, or El Cid, or the Tang Dynasty poet, Li Bai. The reader and I share, right off the top, an awareness that all writing about history (however well researched) involves invention and imagination, especially when it comes to real people and their thoughts and words, or invented deeds.

It might be argued (it has been argued) that ‘it’s just a novel’ or ‘it is just a movie’ are out clauses from these issues. When it comes to books I’m uneasy with the self-disparagement implied in a writer saying that about his or her own work, or about the art form of fiction. What is so limited about writing fiction?

More subtly, some have said that the idea that invention has to be involved is implicit in writing about Henry VIII or Genghis Khan, or offering the inner life of Marilyn Monroe, as Joyce Carol Oates did a few years back. The readers all know, the claim then goes, that this is all made up.

Maybe. But I sense some duplicity in this claim, too. Books about famous Tudor women sleeping with just about every Tudor man in reach are trying to have it both ways (no pun intended), seems to me. There’s a real celebrity culture aspect here … the writers gain readers and attention from the frisson that comes from the well-known saying and doing licentious things. Agents will say that the historical fiction market turns these days on just that: books about invented characters simply don’t do as well as those featuring the celebrated or notorious … and this applies even more to film and television. “The Tudors” is now being followed by “The Borgias” as a series. Can one even imagine what poor Lucrezia will get up to?

So I will freely declare that I find working with the past through the screen/prism/filter of the fantastic, characters inspired by but clearly not identical to the real people feels both liberating and ethical at the same time.

Another end of post query: how much do book reviews matter to you? I ask because everyone surrounding Under Heaven is very upbeat this week because Michael Dirda in the Washington Post, and Laura Miller (of Salon magazine) on NPR radio both said exceptionally generous things about the book on Sunday. They’ll likely both end up on the paperback jacket next year. Whether they were heard or read this week, I don’t know. Did anyone catch either? Did they signify? Or does a comment from a trusted friend mean more?

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