09-02-2008, 09:56 AM
Quote:This does not deal with Holland's Rubicon, but I found an interesting defence of "creative nonfiction" by Chairman of the Cambridge History Faculty John Hatcher. Note that he is defending his own book.He admits that it is fictional. Holland presents his book as history, suggesting that the book is reliable. There is a difference between creative nonfiction and bad nonfiction.
Quote:Indeed, it more closely resembles docudrama or creative nonfiction than traditional history, and it contains dialogue. But, as far as possible, the recreations are based on what is known to have happened, and the attitudes and ideas expressed by the characters are derived from what contemporary sources would lead us to expect...
I was encouraged in my writing by a number of supportive colleagues, friends and experts in this field, and who found the format that I had chosen threw welcome light on some important themes very poorly illuminated by surviving sources.
I am really p-ssed about the surge of recent, bad books; and I am a first row spectator, because people with questions inevitably come to Livius.Org.
People find it hard to see the line between fiction and non-fiction. The other day, there was a request if I knew a relative of Pausanias, mentioned by Herodotus or Diodorus, who was present at Plataea. I checked both sources, established that a man with the name that was mentioned did not exist, and told this. At that moment, the Wikipedia page had already been created; I suspect the man who had written me had believed that a novel had been well-researched.
And the errors are seeping back into official scholarship - see this review. The author has a Ph.D. and I suspect he is behind at least one e-mail message that was recently sent to me. The National Geographic has in last month's Persia issue repeated old propaganda; fortunately, they are checking what went wrong (but their fact checker is on pregnancy leave or something).
In 2006-2007, I received about TWO HUNDRED messages because of one single book, written by a Dutch professor, which contained no less than 250 factual errors. We work for the same publisher, who told me that the professor has three times refused to improve his text.
As far as I am concerned: it does matter to have the facts right. If a scholar uses fiction to evoke something, and indicates where the fictional parts start, that's fine with me. In the other parts, the facts must be correct.
An interesting book: Damian Thompson, Counter-knowledge. How we surrendered to conspiracy theories, quack medicine, bogus science and fake history (2008, Atlantic books, London).
[size=75:1eh552gr]<Edit: improved link>[/size]
