Do you really want to know? You did mention a masochistic streak? Jacques Henric (http://www.tonyscherman.com/book/pub_wrestling.html) in an essay (scroll down) included in the Tony Scherman book (http://www.amazon.com/Tony-Scherman-Chasing-Napoleon-Forensic/dp/0906506158) that helpfully pairs portraits of French Revolutionary leaders with their "counterparts" in the Third Reich. As you might have gathered, it is a rather superficial reading. Éléonore gets a mention too :s
If she's claiming - as she seems to be - that she has some privileged view of the evidence allowing her to get to know the "real" Desmoulins or Robespierre or whoever and that they then directed her writing... Well, I would refuse to buy that even if her narrative was impossibly plausible in every detail, which, of course, it's not.
Absolutely, it's delusional. Because it takes out the fact that no matter how hard you study someone to create an accurate picture when you come to write a fictional account of them that knowledge has to be filtered through you and your ability to understand situations and your emotional responses to things. I know characters do "run away" but even then, it's something in your psyche they are acting out, even if it's buried pretty deep. My guess is, if you want to aim for accuracy in historical fiction, you have to be on your guard for this a bit otherwise you can end up making a lot of false connections, blinded by the fact you are projecting your life experience onto a character incapable of seeing the world in that way.
Example - her Pre-Revolution Robespierre as frustrated middle-class nobody seething with pent up rage repressed beneath a neat and polite exterior makes him sound like a serial killer just seems far more 1970s than 1780s to me.
Most people, once satisfied that a person knows more about a subject than they do, will simply absorb what they are saying, especially if what they say it in a sophisticated manner - and all the more so if it confirms their world view.
That's true, and sad, especially if their world view is a jenga tower built on the pearls of wisdom handed down from these 'informed people'.
At least Furet was aware that he wasn't a Robespierriste.
Heh. I thought Furet too when I saw the ex-communist blah-blah-blah. And yes, points to the revisionists/reactionaries/neo-cons for at least not being hypocrites. I recently saw a picture of Mantel in Buckingham Palace recieving her CBE and there was a part of me screaming -So while you were curtsying before the Queen vowing to uphold the British Empire, how much of a Robespierriste did you feel? Not that it should surprise me. I think it goes back to your point about liking Robespierre's percieved personality and pitying him his irrational politics.
She even mentions one case where she made up something improbable in this very essay: Danton and Fabre's prerevolutionary encounter.
And while we are on the subject of Fabre, gay-partner beater whose magic thumps cure speech impediments, unlikely. Made up? I don't know enough to say for definite, but I'd hazard an informed guess it's bullshit.
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regna
(no subject)
Date: Wednesday, 2 June 2010 22:34 (UTC)Do you really want to know? You did mention a masochistic streak? Jacques Henric (http://www.tonyscherman.com/book/pub_wrestling.html) in an essay (scroll down) included in the Tony Scherman book (http://www.amazon.com/Tony-Scherman-Chasing-Napoleon-Forensic/dp/0906506158) that helpfully pairs portraits of French Revolutionary leaders with their "counterparts" in the Third Reich. As you might have gathered, it is a rather superficial reading. Éléonore gets a mention too :s
If she's claiming - as she seems to be - that she has some privileged view of the evidence allowing her to get to know the "real" Desmoulins or Robespierre or whoever and that they then directed her writing... Well, I would refuse to buy that even if her narrative was impossibly plausible in every detail, which, of course, it's not.
Absolutely, it's delusional. Because it takes out the fact that no matter how hard you study someone to create an accurate picture when you come to write a fictional account of them that knowledge has to be filtered through you and your ability to understand situations and your emotional responses to things. I know characters do "run away" but even then, it's something in your psyche they are acting out, even if it's buried pretty deep. My guess is, if you want to aim for accuracy in historical fiction, you have to be on your guard for this a bit otherwise you can end up making a lot of false connections, blinded by the fact you are projecting your life experience onto a character incapable of seeing the world in that way.
Example - her Pre-Revolution Robespierre as frustrated middle-class nobody seething with pent up rage repressed beneath a neat and polite exterior
makes him sound like a serial killerjust seems far more 1970s than 1780s to me.Most people, once satisfied that a person knows more about a subject than they do, will simply absorb what they are saying, especially if what they say it in a sophisticated manner - and all the more so if it confirms their world view.
That's true, and sad, especially if their world view is a jenga tower built on the pearls of wisdom handed down from these 'informed people'.
At least Furet was aware that he wasn't a Robespierriste.
Heh. I thought Furet too when I saw the ex-communist blah-blah-blah. And yes, points to the revisionists/reactionaries/neo-cons for at least not being hypocrites. I recently saw a picture of Mantel in Buckingham Palace recieving her CBE and there was a part of me screaming -So while you were curtsying before the Queen vowing to uphold the British Empire, how much of a Robespierriste did you feel? Not that it should surprise me. I think it goes back to your point about liking Robespierre's percieved personality and pitying him his irrational politics.
She even mentions one case where she made up something improbable in this very essay: Danton and Fabre's prerevolutionary encounter.
And while we are on the subject of Fabre, gay-partner beater whose magic thumps cure speech impediments, unlikely. Made up? I don't know enough to say for definite, but I'd hazard an informed guess it's bullshit.