I don’t mean to say that historical fiction can’t be criticized in terms of its presentation of history. But I think it’s a serious problem that far more public ink goes to critiquing novelists’ source work or directors’ casting decisions than the gutting of libraries, archives and history programs. - ThreadSky

tedmccormick.bsky.social • 2 days ago

I don’t mean to say that historical fiction can’t be criticized in terms of its presentation of history. But I think it’s a serious problem that far more public ink goes to critiquing novelists’ source work or directors’ casting decisions than the gutting of libraries, archives and history programs.

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grumpy0ldman84.bsky.social•2 days ago

💪

tedmccormick.bsky.social•2 days ago

Representations matter, but what they represent matters a lot more, and the latter is currently in much more fundamental peril.

tedmccormick.bsky.social•2 days ago

If you don’t like Mantel’s portrayal of Thomas Cromwell it is in your power to write (or, still more easily and plausibly, recommend) a better one. If you kill an archive there is not another one waiting to take its place, and you lose the material basis for better representations into the bargain.

tedmccormick.bsky.social•2 days ago

Part of what right-wing and centrist jeremiads about the erasure of history have done (quite successfully) is portray choices about representation or commemoration as the stuff of the past, while determinedly attacking the material basis and the training required both for these and for alternatives.

tedmccormick.bsky.social•2 days ago

So you are encouraged to imagine that the past is directly at stake in whether we are fair enough to empire or slavery, but not at all in whether we still have professional historians or professionally run and well funded libraries and archives that hold the sources on which interpretations depend.

tedmccormick.bsky.social•2 days ago

It is perfectly valid to criticize fictionalized representations of the past, to say nothing of non-fictional ones. It’s just hard to feel, in the present moment, that the unfairness of a novelist to a source matters very much even to the future of the specific history the novel claims to represent.

robertelewis.bsky.social•2 days ago

Maybe we should remember the preamble of the constitution that I was taught in school in the seventh grade . We the people of the United States of America in order to form a more perfect union have established justice. Justice, justice, justice people by the people read it.

alicewood77.bsky.social•2 days ago

🥰🥰🥰

punnah1959.bsky.social•2 days ago

I think questioning material presented to the public for consumption must absolutely be questioned. The novelist and anyone connected with its publication and or production must properly scrutinized. Words have power. That power must be dissected by the consumer though, not the government!

tedmccormick.bsky.social•2 days ago

It is not clear to me that we disagree

tedmccormick.bsky.social•2 days ago

Though I will admit to not knowing what forms of “scrutiny” can meaningfully be applied to absolutely *anyone* involved in a novel’s publication

punnah1959.bsky.social•2 days ago

Just weed out manipulation of people based on design not creativity.

devlinburgess.bsky.social•2 days ago

I'd also feel a lot better about criticizing historical fiction if we more consistently applied those same principles to our own work. In grad school, critiques of published work were always encouraged to be really half-hearted and fence-sitting, no matter how serious the faults of the work. /1

devlinburgess.bsky.social•2 days ago

Meanwhile, you can run your mouth about inconsequential details in historical fiction-and even get it wrong yourself - and it feels like nobody bats an eye.
It's....probably unfair, but sometimes it feels like the implicit criticism is more about a non-historian doing history rather than accuracy.

tedmccormick.bsky.social•2 days ago

Yeah, there’s something to this; it echoes the “pop history” discussion at some points (though there’s plenty of blame to go around there, and some of the issues are more distinctive, e.g. around crediting sources).

devlinburgess.bsky.social•2 days ago

Yes, I don't want to portrayed historians as a monolith or anything, or asign us the sole blame. Just....expressing some personal frustrations.

carlosharwith.bsky.social•2 days ago

Speak out.

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