History v historical fiction

[ish mailian]

As for "real history" itself--the traditional object, however it may be
defined, of what used to be the historical novel--it will be more revealing
now to turn back to that older form and medium and to read its postmodern
fate in the work of one of the few serious and innovative leftist novelists
at work in the United States today, whose books are nourished with history
in the more traditional sense and seem, so far, to stake out successive
generational moments in the "epic" of American history, between which they
alternate. E. L. Doctorow’s *Ragtime *gives itself officially as a panorama
of the first two decades of the century (like World’s Fair); his most
recent novel, *Billy Bathgate*, like *Loon Lake *addresses the thirties and
the Great Depression, while *The Book of Daniel* holds up before us, in
painful juxtaposition, the two great moments of the Old Left and the New
Left, of thirties and forties communism and the radicalism of the 1960s
(even his early western may be said to fit into this scheme and to
designate in a less articulated and formally self-conscious way the end of
the frontier of the late nineteenth century).

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~drbr/jameson/jameson.html

On Sun, Oct 18, 2015 at 7:56 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm not convinced by Jane Smiley's argument about history and fiction
> making; she slaps at the condescender, Niall Ferguson, a face most
> readers of The Guardian want to slap at too, then goes on to promote
> herself and her books. What she says about fiction and history, historical
> fiction, is mostly bullshit. Flowers in a vase, constructs, logic. What
> rubbish.
>
> On Sun, Oct 18, 2015 at 5:44 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Agree. He projects his biased world.
>>
>> Sent from my iPad
>>
>> > On Oct 17, 2015, at 6:44 PM, Paul Nightingale <isread at btinternet.com>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> > Ferguson barely cuts it as a 'secondary' historian.
>> >
>> > -----Original Message-----
>> > From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On
>> Behalf Of Dave Monroe
>> > Sent: 17 October 2015 23:10
>> > To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> > Subject: History v historical fiction
>> >
>> > Historical fiction is not a secondary form – I was condescended to by a
>> conservative historian who cannot see that he too constructs stories
>> >
>> >
>> http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/oct/15/jane-smiley-niall-ferguson-history-versus-historical-fiction
>> >
>> > Thanks, Doug Millison!
>> > -
>> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=nchon-l
>> >
>> > -
>> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>
>
>
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