What makes a piece of fiction "just a period piece"? The difference between a history book and a book of historical fiction is that you have surrendered more to the fiction. You see yourself in the situation. History should be somewhat scientific, tentative, at a remove, contingent and open to debate. There is no such emotional luxury in a novel. You are right there in the moment, in the predicament. But still, it can't just be a historically limited predicament that feels over and done. It has to feel like a problem that still relates to the reader. How can the writer fool the reader into thinking he or she is still implicated in the plot?
Is it all a matter of the rush of the plot? If so, it might only be good for one viewing. It might not be the kind of story that really sticks with you. How do you shape a narrative that adheres to the reader's mind? I'm not sure I have the answer, but I do know that from Homer to Updike literature has made of patterns. Doubles, opposites, echoes and repetitions. A theme is sounded and brought back up. This is fiction. This is not science. So the fictive can be somewhat at odds with the historical. A novel is like life only better. It has more coincidence and clearer significance. It might not always make sense to the people in the story but readers can come back to it and find patterns. These can be abstract -- take, for instance, the linden tree in Thomas Mann's *The Magic Mountain.* Lindens just show up from time to time. What do they mean? Are they even a symbol or a simple repetition? Surely they are part of a pattern. It's probably easier to see why Hamlet uses a lot of talk of disease in his play. He thinks the world is sick, and his sick of the world.
I've already mentioned birds in my novel, but there are flies, mosquitoes, and rockets as well. Weaving such things into the woof and weft of a book is something I learned to do by reading Mann and Updike, ETA Hoffman, Poe and Herman Melville. It may not be realistic always, but it has a kind of beauty, I believe, that goes beyond the particular and points toward the universal.
Is it all a matter of the rush of the plot? If so, it might only be good for one viewing. It might not be the kind of story that really sticks with you. How do you shape a narrative that adheres to the reader's mind? I'm not sure I have the answer, but I do know that from Homer to Updike literature has made of patterns. Doubles, opposites, echoes and repetitions. A theme is sounded and brought back up. This is fiction. This is not science. So the fictive can be somewhat at odds with the historical. A novel is like life only better. It has more coincidence and clearer significance. It might not always make sense to the people in the story but readers can come back to it and find patterns. These can be abstract -- take, for instance, the linden tree in Thomas Mann's *The Magic Mountain.* Lindens just show up from time to time. What do they mean? Are they even a symbol or a simple repetition? Surely they are part of a pattern. It's probably easier to see why Hamlet uses a lot of talk of disease in his play. He thinks the world is sick, and his sick of the world.
I've already mentioned birds in my novel, but there are flies, mosquitoes, and rockets as well. Weaving such things into the woof and weft of a book is something I learned to do by reading Mann and Updike, ETA Hoffman, Poe and Herman Melville. It may not be realistic always, but it has a kind of beauty, I believe, that goes beyond the particular and points toward the universal.
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