I like reading GOOD historical fictions, but I know that when reading these, I end by knowing all about their authors ideas and few about real historical events and persons. I agree with you, although I think, no matter what the author says, this is always the case when reading a fiction, no matter what genre. The reader always stipulates a contract with the writer and agrees to suspend his/her own sense of truth while enjoying the narration; this is precisely a point where I disagree with Domecq in is essay one the literature. He postulates that if this contract is ill formulated (like in Les Bienfaisant where the narrator, which is a nazi, plays with the audience saying `if you were me, you would have had the very same behaviour', of course this is not ontologically true, but that is when your suspension of critical judgment come in), then it is not valid. But I am digressing here, back to my point. I think fiction should be judged by its own criterion and this is a thing that most of people fashioned by history/historians tend to forget. I am a bit tired of people (it's not just something between people interested in French Revolution, it happens with Ancient History as well and probably with any area of history) claiming that that portrait of Robespierre is `not true', that Saint-Just `will never behave in that way' and Desmoulins was `not as nice as in that book' (I read this kind of critics every time I read a discussion about a historical novel). Of course it's not true, it's fiction, it's the author writing with his/her own sensibility/vision of the things (and hopefully is the author trying to convey some kind of message). What should be right to say is `I do not like it' or `It is incoherent because of..'. A bad fiction book is a book which has stylistic/narratological flaws or historical in the sense that it does not respect the macro-event (you can't write an historical novel claiming that Romans had atomic energy, of course), but criticizing the work of an author because he/she does not mirror your understanding of something is my opinion is just ...childish. Of course the reader has the right to say `I don't like his/her treatment of that character, so I won't read the book". George Büchner's "Dantons Tod " and Stanislawa Prybyzewska (I'm writing her name straight?) "Danton's Case" and "Thermidor". Büchner and Prybyzewska believed they understood Danton's and Robespierre's inner beings, but they only put their own ideos into their heads. I do not know enough of both writers biography to judge the peculiar case, so take my words as mere speculation. I got the impression from the reading of both works that there was much more in them about the writer's own self and his/her time than about the French Revolution, that's way I found them literary enjoyable (especially Prybyzewska, whose characters (at least some of them) are portrayed really well and are consistently working towards the plot). When a writer is claiming that `he/she knows best of inner feeling/events/etc..', my temptation is always to think that he/she is playing whit a very well-known topic to stipulate his/her contract with the reader (the same when an author claim to have found `an old manuscripts that tells the story of..'), rather than really putting him/her-self above everyone else, which is a very naif assertion.
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I agree with you, although I think, no matter what the author says, this is always the case when reading a fiction, no matter what genre. The reader always stipulates a contract with the writer and agrees to suspend his/her own sense of truth while enjoying the narration; this is precisely a point where I disagree with Domecq in is essay one the literature. He postulates that if this contract is ill formulated (like in Les Bienfaisant where the narrator, which is a nazi, plays with the audience saying `if you were me, you would have had the very same behaviour', of course this is not ontologically true, but that is when your suspension of critical judgment come in), then it is not valid.
But I am digressing here, back to my point. I think fiction should be judged by its own criterion and this is a thing that most of people fashioned by history/historians tend to forget. I am a bit tired of people (it's not just something between people interested in French Revolution, it happens with Ancient History as well and probably with any area of history) claiming that that portrait of Robespierre is `not true', that Saint-Just `will never behave in that way' and Desmoulins was `not as nice as in that book' (I read this kind of critics every time I read a discussion about a historical novel). Of course it's not true, it's fiction, it's the author writing with his/her own sensibility/vision of the things (and hopefully is the author trying to convey some kind of message). What should be right to say is `I do not like it' or `It is incoherent because of..'. A bad fiction book is a book which has stylistic/narratological flaws or historical in the sense that it does not respect the macro-event (you can't write an historical novel claiming that Romans had atomic energy, of course), but criticizing the work of an author because he/she does not mirror your understanding of something is my opinion is just ...childish. Of course the reader has the right to say `I don't like his/her treatment of that character, so I won't read the book".
George Büchner's "Dantons Tod " and Stanislawa Prybyzewska (I'm writing her name straight?) "Danton's Case" and "Thermidor". Büchner and Prybyzewska believed they understood Danton's and Robespierre's inner beings, but they only put their own ideos into their heads.
I do not know enough of both writers biography to judge the peculiar case, so take my words as mere speculation. I got the impression from the reading of both works that there was much more in them about the writer's own self and his/her time than about the French Revolution, that's way I found them literary enjoyable (especially Prybyzewska, whose characters (at least some of them) are portrayed really well and are consistently working towards the plot). When a writer is claiming that `he/she knows best of inner feeling/events/etc..', my temptation is always to think that he/she is playing whit a very well-known topic to stipulate his/her contract with the reader (the same when an author claim to have found `an old manuscripts that tells the story of..'), rather than really putting him/her-self above everyone else, which is a very naif assertion.