It's odd that there is so much controversy concerning the distinguishing features of history and fiction when the two genres have only been separate for a thousand or so years. The Tale of Genji, a massive Japanese book by noblewoman in the Heian period (11th century), lays a claim on the title of "first novel ever written", and so does La Morte d'Arthur, which was written in the western world in the 1460s. Of course, 600-1000 years is a considerable amount of time, but if you consider that humans have been around for about 200,000 years, and that we have been writing for about 5500 years, that doesn't really seem too long ago.
History, for a long time, has been transmitted orally in the form of stories that were probably slightly altered with each retelling. Facts were virtually nonexistent, because dates and even reliable record of events were not completely set in stone (although you could argue that most "facts" about events in history are not really facts because all recollections of occurrences are subjective). Many historical stories were told with elements of fiction; many Greek epic poems could be considered fictional, although they were not novels. Many stories also had morals, and fables have been popular for a long time. So people didn't really distinguish between history and fiction as much as they do now.
Now, we have very clear distinctions between fiction and history that we impose on books. Facts are very important--with such huge databases of historical information, there is not much room for blurring the lines of history in novels, and fictional tidbits cannot be added into historical books (God forbid!). Writers of historical fiction usually have to carefully fact-check, write Historical Notes at the end of the book that talk about all the things they decided to change, and only change things where facts are unclear or absent from the historical record. That is why Ragtime is so confusing. It blends historical figures with fictional facts and events, and maybe fictional characters with real events. It is not history, it is not fiction, it is hardly even "respectable" historical fiction. In a world of about thirty different sections in the bookstore covering all the different types of books, Ragtime is not really anything in particular, which makes us puzzled and mildly uncomfortable. But the question is, why does it make us uncomfortable? Doesn't all fiction borrow liberally from history, and the same for history from fiction? Maybe they are really just the same thing, written in different styles and tones.
Interesting post, I really like the way you phrased the last sentence. History and fiction in the end both just consist of stories, even if they are meant for different purposes. As history flows along its own path, we, as humans, try to piece together what has happened from our perspective into a rigid narrative. There are limitless narratives, and we actually have no idea whether or not our accounts are accurate at all. Ragtime definitely consistently blurs the lines between fact and fiction, and by doing so, Doctorow shines a light on the fact that you have pointed out: even if they are told in different ways accompanied with different expectations, they are the same.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading the White essay that may have prompted this post, I got to thinking about all the things he was saying about relations of "history" in the past. In our contemporary nomenclature, we have the word "mythical," which means both related to a myth or fictional tale, as well as having the qualities as to be suitable to be in a myth (i.e. legendary, epic). Even today, we have small remnants of a past in which tall tale and cold hard truth blended together to the point where there was no point in trying to distinguish the difference. A story may not be exactly true per se, but the fact that it exists, the things it describes are, and that relates some truth about the person who told it and the culture in which it is told. The Epic of Gilgamesh probably never happened, but its critical to understanding Mesopotamian culture from the time. That's what Doctorow gets at when he says that the parts of his story not based in fact stand even truer to him than the parts that were totally, factually "correct." I think Ragtime itself plays with this intertwining of fact and fiction in an incredibly interesting and useful way.
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