Ok, so call me a chutzpah merchant for stealing Proust to talk about research. We virgin authors need all the cred we can purloin.
À la recherche du temps perdu
Ok, so call me a chutzpah merchant for stealing Proust to talk about research. We virgin authors need all the cred we can purloin.
If I had one wish, it would be that I could write in a stream of consciousness that had little need for historical veracity. No such luck. For me there was only a deep dive into an ocean of data. And when you’ve chosen as the central theme possibly the single greatest catastrophe to befall a people, you take upon yourself the moral imperative to get it right.
With a novel spanning a momentous century and whose hero is submerged in its two great conflagrations, it was not enough to ‘remember lost times’ but to reveal them. In other words, get under their skin for the purposes of exposure, rather than merely articulate events, albeit (hopefully) in a compelling and literary form.
But pretty quickly I realised that this was treacherous territory, with many opportunities to go badly wrong. When you read broadly and deeply around a subject, there is a real temptation to show off your learning. Of course, you’re going to have to buy the book to find out whether I succumbed!
So, the long, lonely distances travelled refer as much to the hours of sitting with book and screen as it does to the days spent tapping away at the keyboard. But it has had some high spots, no more so than finding that a personal account of life and death in the extreme margins of human depravity was undeservedly out-of-print. A request for a facsimile sent to the publisher led to an e-mail exchange, a gift of their last-ever copy and the reprinting of the book, something I could tell the author’s son about.
That, and the correspondence I had with a participant in the emotional centre of the novel, reminded me daily that what we know, and how we know it, is imperfect, incomplete and invariably subjective. And, therefore, any one fact should not really be relied upon with some further verification. Of course, fiction is just that, fiction. But there is a delicate tightrope to be walked when dealing with sensitive and controversial subjects.
Cue existential crisis.
Ian Phillips is a freelance writer for businesses whose first novel, Grosse Fugue, will be published by Alliance Publishing Press on April 3rd. He’s tweeting developments @Ian_at_theWord.
Hi Adrian,
I do, too! I'll talk in a future post about the joys of being edited, but I think it is certainly beneficial to have that particular aspect of a novel like mine scrutinised.
The problem is, that by the time it in the hands of the only important arbiter, the reader, it's too late.
Such is our lot.
Hi Ian,
Another great post. I am really enjoying them.
I always thought we were always doing research of some form or another all the time by always looking out for new plotlines by reading the papers aqnd watching the news. Researching the different styles by reading a wide variety of books? I readily admit I have never felt tempted to do an biographical or historical novel but I just know that if I did I would be so bogged down with facts that it just wouldn't read like a novel. I would be one of the ones in danger of making it dry and boring.
Hi Ian.
I listened to authors advice on various sites and through the media. It is interesting to find that some authors do a lot of research for their novels, while others' do little. I have not read your book, but I can see how the biographical aspects of historic novels can be centrally important according the genre, storyline and plot. To motivate settings, and for sign-posting. However, there is also the danger of over-research. Authors could flood the reader with to much detail. I hope you achieved equilibrium.