Historical Fiction - Worthy or Worthless?

Discussion in 'Books, Films, TV, Radio' started by Gage, Mar 6, 2011.

  1. Owen

    Owen -- --- -.. MOD

    Thought I'd drag this thread up again as it might be of use to members with summer holidays here for book recommendations.

    Today I bought Bernard Cornwell's The Fort.
    Bernard Cornwell - The Author's Official Site - Sharpe Books dot com

    I enjoyed Redcoat when it came out back in 1987 & this one is also set in the American War of Independence.
    Am looks forward to a good old yarn with some historical basis.
     
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  2. Steve Mac

    Steve Mac Very Senior Member

    Thought I'd drag this thread up again as it might be of use to members with summer holidays here for book recommendations.

    Today I bought Bernard Cornwell's The Fort.
    Bernard Cornwell - The Author's Official Site - Sharpe Books dot com

    I enjoyed Redcoat when it came out back in 1987 & this one is also set in the American War of Independence.
    Am looks forward to a good old yarn with some historical basis.

    I enjoyed The Fort Owen. You'll be left wondering how the Colonies ever became Independent! :D

    Enjoy!!

    Steve.
     
    Roxy likes this.
  3. Gage

    Gage The Battle of Barking Creek

    Thought I'd drag this thread up again as it might be of use to members with summer holidays here for book recommendations.

    Today I bought Bernard Cornwell's The Fort.
    Bernard Cornwell - The Author's Official Site - Sharpe Books dot com

    I enjoyed Redcoat when it came out back in 1987 & this one is also set in the American War of Independence.
    Am looks forward to a good old yarn with some historical basis.

    I do need to read more Cornwell as his writing and story telling is excellent.
     
    Roxy likes this.
  4. Ron Goldstein

    Ron Goldstein WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Thread bumped and my offer still stands :)

    Ron
     
  5. Gage

    Gage The Battle of Barking Creek

    I'm re-reading Robert Harris - Enigma again for about the fifth time, I've said it few times how it's one of my fave ever books.
    How could you not love the opening?
    [​IMG]
     

    Attached Files:

  6. Alan Allport

    Alan Allport Senior Member

    How could you not love the opening?

    It is a nice opening paragraph, though it's also a bit of a rip-off of, erm homage to, Dickens.

    Best, Alan
     
  7. Gage

    Gage The Battle of Barking Creek

    It is a nice opening paragraph, though it's also a bit of a rip-off of, erm homage to, Dickens.

    Best, Alan

    Ahh, always loved A Christmas Carol.

    Harris has always created an atmosphere or setting in a perfect way for me.
     
  8. Ron Goldstein

    Ron Goldstein WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Gage

    I'm re-reading Robert Harris - Enigma again for about the fifth time, I've said it few times how it's one of my fave ever books.
    How could you not love the opening?


    Which strangely enough reminded me of the opening to the only novelette I've written (or am ever likely to write ! ), namely Semper's Revenge;


    Prologue

    0430 hrs. Wednesday May 2nd. 1945

    The dank grey mist hung low at ground level over the Italian field on this bleak May morning in 1945. It swirled over the hard ground, eddied by the biting cold wind coming from the Urals in the North and as it filtered through the small olive grove it hit a large immovable object that stopped its progress for one brief moment.

    The object, some nine feet high and twenty feet long was a Sherman Mark IIa tank and the mist, impelled relentlessly forward by the wind, climbed up the side of the tank as if to measure and identify the object in its path.

    As the hazy damp cloud reached the turret it spread sideways until it reached the extremities of the cupola shaped turret and then rolled on, to drop over the other side of the hull and continue its progress.

    Whatever was touched by the mist became damp and this included the olive green wooden box strapped to the side of the metal ammunition container at the rear of the turret.

    The box had German army markings on it, the most prominent of which was a stylised black eagle and various numbers and letters had been stencilled on the lid to indicate that the contents of the box were, or should have been, ammunition for a Spandau machine gun.

    It was not all that unusual for a British army tank to be carrying German equipment at this stage of the war, most army vehicles seemed to have accumulated a large variety of items that by no stretch of imagination could have been described as Army Issue, British.

    What was different about this particular wooden Wermacht container was its present contents, namely, 60,000 US Dollars, all neatly packed with typical German efficiency into green waterproof packets and then stacked with loving care into the box's interior.


    Ron
     
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  9. TTH

    TTH Senior Member

    I try to write historical fiction, and it is very tough to bring off successfully. Some historical war fiction is based on sound research, but the writing just isn't very good. John Wilcox' 19th century British army stuff is in this class, and so in my opinion is John Cornwell. I just read a WWI Royal Navy novel called Thunder at Dawn; I can't recall the writer's name, but he's better than Cornwell or Wilcox. Still, I wouldn't call his writing more than functional. In fiction, I look for credible characters, memorable dialogue, vivid description, etc., and most historical and war fiction doesn't provide those things.

    War novels written by men who've seen combat are usually better. James Jones is the best American war novelist, and I recently read a fine, unappreciated Korean War book called The Last Campaign by a Korean War veteran named Ross. Among non-veterans, Len Deighton and Derek Robinson are both accurate historians and fairly good fiction writers, a rare combination. Theodor Plievier saw the fall of Stalingrad from the Soviet side and he interviewed some German POWs, and that gives his Stalingrad a lot of power. I've read good Vietnam novels by James Del Vecchio, Winston Groom, and Karl Marlantes, all of whom were there.

    However, veteran status does NOT necessarily make a man a good writer. I gave up on Leon Uris' Battle Cry after a few chapters because it was so badly written.
     
  10. phylo_roadking

    phylo_roadking Very Senior Member

    Fiction does have a role in wartime too. I've just come across THIS - The Moon Is Down - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ...having been inspired to look up details of it by finding a copy in a job lot of old Pan paperbacks I picked up yesterday for £10...

    I didn't see it at first - I was MORE interested in the fact that the pile contains MacIntyr'e's Jutland and Narvik, John Castle's The Password Is Courage, Odette, Brickhill's Escape-or Die and a whole stack of other memoirs - 22 in all in great condition for my tenner!
     
  11. AndyG

    AndyG Researcher

    I think the real stories by the men and Women of War far outweigh fictional accounts that's why you wont find anything fictional on my bookshelf
     
  12. Ron Goldstein

    Ron Goldstein WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Giving this thread a bump.

    Back in 2007 I offered forum members a glimpse of my one (& only) novelette "Semper's Revenge"
    http://www.ww2talk.com/forum/books-films-tv-radio/11912-war-novels-3.html

    At the time I was completely underwhelmed by the response but now, in my dotage, I give you a last chance to read this tale of derring-do.

    The storyline goes as follows:

    “Semper’s Revenge” is set in the North of Italy in the closing stages of World War II.

    Semper, or to give the tank it its full title “Semper in Excretum”, is a British tank that has been temporarily trapped on the wrong side of the battle lines and is frantically trying to rejoin its unit, the prestigious 2nd Queen’s Lancers.

    What is so unusual about “Semper” is the German ammunition box strapped to the rear of its turret that contains 60,000 US Dollars all neatly wrapped in waterproof packets.

    The circumstances that led to the discovery of the box is only one of a series of mind-boggling series of events experienced by the crew, led by the young, newly promoted, Sgt.Bob Bianchi, over a period of three days.

    Escaping SS Generals, embittered Partisans, a beleaguered Monastery full of sick children and even the discovery of a recently liberated British POW camp are amongst the many problems they have to face and solve before they are finally reunited with their Regiment.

    How to get your free copy (In .pdf format)
    1. Go to my Blog Profile: Blogger: User Profile: Ron Goldstein
    2. Pick up my e-mail address.
    3. Send me an e-mail with SEMPER PLEASE in the subject box.

    Ron
     
  13. Sheldrake

    Sheldrake All over the place....

    Good fiction can tell a historical truth or perpetuate falshood.

    The Cruel Sea and other Nicholas Monsarrat books captured a reality of the battle of the Atlantic. Bomber by Len Deighton captured something of the Bomber Command war - albeit with a late C20th sense of guilt.

    Many of the first accounts from the Great War told a disguised history. Goodbye to all that and Her privates we/ the middle parts of Fortune are fictionalised accounts of real units. There is a question about the extent to which "The Forgotten Soldier" by Guy Sajer is true or fictionalised and Ken Tour admitted that "Tank!" was based on his fallible memory and has revised his story in his more academic works.

    The most dangerous form of fiction is that which draws on the truth to perpetuate an untruth. Sebastian Faulks Birdsong is particularly pernicious because he combines a historically accurate 1st day of the Somme with a fantasy 1918 which ends with both sides in trench positions of 1915-17. This enables him to perpetuate the oh what a lovely war attitude to the Great War for literary reasonsbecause its a better story.

    Arguably, Sven Hassel and Leo Kessler have glamorized the Nazis and encouraged a generation of Britons to identify with the bad guys. Do any of these books have the heroes take part in an anti partisan action or executing hostages or British and US prisoners?

    Leo Kessler under his alter ego of Charles Whiting blurs the distinction between fact and fiction with his unreferenced "Military histories". What is the source for the stories that appear to claim that the Germans infiltrated an OP into Cleveaux before the Bulge battle or that Patton was having an affair with his niece?
     
  14. Owen

    Owen -- --- -.. MOD

    Just finished The Greatcoat by Helen Dunmore , it was on the bookshelf of the holiday cottage we're in, blurb said it was a ghost story, I'd say it was more of a love story.
    Set in dreary Post-war England it features the ghost of an RAF Lancaster pilot & the wartime airfield he flew from.
    Not the normal book I'd read but it certainly got me thinking alot about the young men facing their nightly fears on ops & not allowing themselves to think of the future.
     
  15. TriciaF

    TriciaF Junior Member

    Choice of reading material is very personal. I used to read novels, but switched to nonfiction about 20 years ago.
    All the books that I've read about WW2 lately have been non-fiction. A neighbour has lent me a couple of modern novels about the war, but I lost interest after the first few chapters. They just didn't have the immediacy and impact of nonfiction, I prefer personal recollections. There are so many still being published written by people who were actually there.
    I've just given about 15 of them to the local library.
     
  16. Nick Pringle

    Nick Pringle Member

    I like the idea of historical fiction for the long distant past, where there is few written records, but I would not touch most WW2 novels with a barge pole. Why? because

    a. There is so many wonderful true biographies written by veterans of the war, there is no need to waste time reading stuff written by writers who were not alive at the time.
    b. I think most writers are not up to the job as they have a totally different outlook to most of that generation, so will distort and misrepresent those that were involved in the war.

    I am sure there is a few authors that might do a good job, but these I think would have to have an excellent knowledge of the war and also probably have met loads of veterans to get a good idea of what they might have done and said in situations.
     
  17. bamboo43

    bamboo43 Very Senior Member

    The element I've enjoyed the most about fictional books around the topic of the Burma campaign, written by veterans of that campaign, is their description of the environment and how it effects the soldiers within it. For instance the oppressive and solitary nature of fighting in the jungle. This has definitely helped me conjure up the sounds, sights and smells in my minds eye.
     
  18. TTH

    TTH Senior Member

    I try to write historical fiction, so I naturally I think it is a worthy genre. It is a very, very difficult genre to write well, though, and it becomes more so the further away the author is from the period and the event he is describing. A writer of good historical fiction must combine the abilities of both a good fiction writer and a good historian, and that combination is not very common. The historical element is not just a matter of getting the bald facts right (weapons, clothes, etc); the writer also has to enter psychologically into the time and place, to get inside the minds of his characters even more deeply than an ordinary fiction writer. While certain basics of human nature and behavior remain true always, it is also true that people thought, spoke, and behaved differently in the past. The writer of historical fiction has to convey that most important difference of all to his readers, and if he does not then he has failed totally no matter how well he gets the details of a Tiger's engine or a Liberator's range with a full bombload. World War II is not that far away in time and we are still blessed to have some veterans with us, but I cannot tell you how many times I have been depressed by historical novels (and movies, etc) that get the behavior, the psychology, and the attitudes of the era wrong.
    Sometimes a little thing can tell you that the author does not understand his subject. I saw an episode of the TV series Mad Men, which is set in a New York ad agency in the late 1950s and early 60s. One character (Alpha) says to another (Beta) that he has "an issue" with a proposal made by Beta. What he means by "issue," of course, is "problem" or "objection to." And "problem" or "objection to", of course, is exactly what a man of 1960 would have said. Mad Men has been widely praised as an accurate picture of the era in which it is set, but that little language error told me that the writers were too rooted in our own time to understand the mentality of the time they wrote about. So I quit on the show.
    Good historical novels about any period are hard to write, but that doesn't mean writers should not try; quite the contrary. When a historical novel works, it can tell you things you may not get from non-fiction; it can make history live. Here are a few historical novels I like:
    1. Shiloh, Shelby Foote
    2. The Seven Percent Solution, Nicholas Meyer
    3. The Conspiracy, John Hersey
    4. True Grit, Charles Portis (the best of these in conveying an era's mentality)
    5. Goshawk Squadron, Derek Robinson
    6. Covenant with Death, John Harris
    7. Bomber, Len Deighton
    Michael Shaara is overrated. Sebastian Faulks is vastly overrated.Tolstoy, however, is not overrated. How many people remember that War and Peace, often rated the greatest novel ever written, is a historical novel? So if the genre can be that good, I'd say it's worth doing and worth reading.

    The
     
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  19. canuck

    canuck Closed Account

    "It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled"
     
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  20. canuck

    canuck Closed Account

    In thinking about several Canadian fictional novels about both the Great War and WW2, that genre seemed particularly well suited to explore subject matter which would have been highly controversial in a non-fiction work. Specifically, many of these books have dealt extensively with the subject of killing prisoners. It is pretty much an open secret when you speak with veterans but non-fiction authors generally steer well clear of naming names. Much easier to distill multiple true incidents into a composite fictional account.
     

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