History and fiction

[Doug Millison]

http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/oped/30demo.html

Interesting in the light of Pynchon's play with the distinctions between
history and fiction, especially in M&D, this Op-Ed piece, "History Beyond
Data Bits" by John Demos, speaks of the efforts of "new narrative
historians" which "have led quite naturally to a heightened interest in the
relationship of history and fiction. For some, the boundary between the two
seems thin and blurry, and a few have ventured to  cross it by "filling in"
where the trail of past evidence disappears. Interestingly, there are
convergent tendencies on the other side of the boundary, as more and more
novelists turn to historical subjects and settings. Though their work must
still be identified as fiction, much of it reflects careful study of the
details of time, place and culture -- and thus qualifies also as history of
a sort.  The "fictionalizing" of history, whether by novelists or
historians, is hotly controversial nowadays; in certain scholarly quarters,
it is regarded virtually as treason. Moreover, the same controversy,
involving similar doubts and questions, has arisen within journalism and
allied literary forms. "


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