by Leslie H. Nicoll
If you want to be a Macaroni, you have to be a stickler for historical accuracy. Not to scare anyone off, but to me, half the fun of writing historical fiction is doing the research. I love looking up things and learning new tidbits of information. Doesn’t everyone?
This is on my mind because I just finished The Help by Kathryn Stockett. While it was a very good book and I enjoyed it very much, there were a couple of historical anachronisms that I picked up on instantly. Imagine my amazement when I got to the Acknowledgments and Postscript and the author actually admitted to them! Worse, she did not give a reason for why they were included and why she did not change them.
The errors, as she states, were, “Using the song, ‘The Times They Are A-Changin,’ even though it was not released until 1964 and Shake ‘n Bake, which did not hit the shelves until 1965.”
Certainly Bob Dylan is an iconic folk singer, but there were plenty of folkies on the radio waves in 1962 and 1963 (the principal time of the action in the book). If she wanted to stick with Dylan, why not use “Blowin in the Wind,” released in 1963, which certainly addresses issues of freedom and change. Peter, Paul and Mary would be another choice, with hits such as “Lemon Tree” (maybe not too applicable, although the character listening to the music does have a rocky-to-non-existent love life) or “If I Had a Hammer.” My point is, while “The Times They Are A-Changin” is compelling, I don’t think it is compelling enough to rewrite history to include it.
Then there’s the Shake ‘n Bake error. Shake ‘n Bake is mentioned three times in the book, in two different scenes. The first:
Miss Celia puts a raw chicken thigh in, bumps the bag around. “Like this? Just like the Shake ‘n Bake commercials on the tee-vee?”
“Yeah,” I say and run my tongue up over my teeth because if that’s not an insult, I don’t know what is. “Just like the Shake ‘n Bake.”
So the maid is teaching her employer to cook and the employer (Miss Celia) is all about shortcuts and making it easy. Fine, but does it have to be Shake ‘n Bake, three years before it was invented? How about a Duncan Hines cake mix or Betty Crocker brownie mix? Or, it the author wants to subtly address issues of race and class (the overarching theme of the book), why not have her suggest Aunt Jemima pancake mix? That would certainly be insulting to the maid, Minny, moreso than Shake ‘n Bake, which didn’t even exist.
The other time Shake ‘n Bake is mentioned in the book is in this line, “Wondering if, for no good reason I started thinking about Sears and Roebuck or Shake ‘n Bake, would it be because some Illinoian had thought it two days ago. It gets my mind off my troubles for about five seconds.” Just draw a blue line through that Shake ‘n Bake. No need to even include it.
As I said at the beginning, I enjoy doing the research for writing a historical story. I just finished a 33,000 word novella (due to be published in six months). The story takes place in the era of World War II and after. Some of the things I learned while researching various facts for the book:
- Western Union delivery methods, in both the city and the country. In the city, they had delivery men who rode bikes. Out in the country, the Western Union operator was responsible for delivering telegrams, usually in the afternoon after receiving the telegrams in the morning.
- Gone With the Wind premiered in December, 1939, but did not go into wide release in the US until 1941. For six months in 1940, it was in shown in “reserved seat, roadshow engagements,” a format for showing movies that was very popular in the 1940s and 1950s, but is non-existent now. (Note: Gone With the Wind doesn’t even show up in the book. The characters go see The Wizard of Oz, instead, which came out in the summer of 1939.)
- In 1942, the Queen Mary was transporting more than 15,000 US servicemen to England, in preparation for the D-Day invasion. Off the coast of Ireland, the Queen Mary collided with—literally sliced through—one of her escort ships, the HMS Curacao. The Curacao quickly sunk and 338 men perished; only 102 of the crew survived. This tragedy was not made public until after the war ended. Even now, it is sort of hushed up. It is not a proud moment in British and US naval history.
- US families who had loved ones killed in Europe in WWII did have the option to have the soldier’s body sent home to the US for final burial, although it was a complicated and time consuming process that could take years.
- Gay bars in New York city in the early 1960s were dingy, dark, dumpy places that served overpriced drinks, didn’t meet basic sanitation codes, and were run by the Mob. There was a crackdown on all sorts of “undesirable activity,” including known homosexual hangouts, in New York in 1962 and 1963, as Mayor Wagner was trying to “clean up the city” for all the visitors who were expected to come to New York to attend the World’s Fair. Reading about gay bars got me off on a tangent about bath houses and I learned a lot about those, too. In the end, my character didn’t even go to a gay bar, he just went to the bar in his hotel. The logistics of getting him from Madison Avenue and 45th Street to Greenwich Village, location of most of the gay bars, was just too convoluted.
HMS Curacao
Those are just a few facts off the top of my head—I could come up with plenty more. My point is, if you are going to step up to the plate to write historical fiction, then you need to accept the fact that part of the writing process will involve research and fact checking. If you skip this important component of the process, you run the risk of making finicky readers—like me—unhappy.
Kathryn Stockett, shame on you.
Leslie H. Nicoll writes fiction under the pen name of E. N. Holland. Her novella, Our One and Only, will be included in the military history anthology, Hidden Conflict: Tales from Lost Voices in Battle, due to be published in January 2010 by Bristlecone Pine Press and Cheyenne Publishing. You can learn more at her Facebook page, www.facebook.com/leslie.nicoll or LiveJournal, lazylfarm.livejournal.com.
June 23, 2009 at 6:19 pm
History is very knobbly and inconvenient for a writer, but looking at your list of things learned reminds me that putting the extra effort in and finding things that do fit has its own rewards. You learn all sorts of things you wouldn’t otherwise have known.
June 23, 2009 at 8:07 pm
I agree with you about the details – though I wouldn’t have known those particular two myself, the fact that the author acknowledges but does not justify them smacks of laziness in the editing stage. After all, it’s always the little things which throw you out of a story – as I’ve said to other people before, one of my favourite published authors has included at least two things (in two separate books) which throw me out of the story: in one tale, the protagonist boards a Virgin train from London to Sheffield. Virgin have never operated that route, and at the time the book was published it was operated by the easy-to-remember (and reputable) Midland Mainline. The other one is that in another tale, a character talks about going for a meal at Claridge’s (one of Ramsey’s restaurants) and how it had to be booked months in advance – when I know for a fact (because I’ve done it, and I am in no way, shape or form, a person who can ‘pull strings’) that it’s possible to get a table the same day you ring up…
Sorry, rant over. If I ever manage to write a full story, feel free to pull it apart & nit-pick all you like
June 23, 2009 at 9:05 pm
Hear hear!
It’s assumptions – we all make them, we’re all guilty of them (even when we make painstaking research of other things in our books). That’s why we need really on the ball editors to catch what slips through.
Charlie
June 23, 2009 at 9:19 pm
Tiggothy, thanks for your comment. Believe me, I won’t pull apart your story, but if there is something I know and can advise you about, I certainly will. In my novella, I had one friend who is a military expert advise me on the finer points of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and I fixed something that would have been a big mistake if I left it in. Another friend told me that the value I had of for francs was wrong — a character was paying 7 francs for a cab and it should have been 70. Oh the wonders of the Internet that let you search and find the value of the franc to a dollar in 1985! LOL
Leslie
June 23, 2009 at 10:35 pm
Hm. The notes may have been a matter of the book having gone into production too late for the author to fix her mistake–I didn’t have to get the bio and author’s notes in to Running Press until after I’d checked the page proofs for Tangled Web, and if I’d found a mistake that annoyed me, I’d have had to put an errata note there. It may have been too late/costly to fix the bloopers.
Personally, I’d have just changed the story to 1966, unless there was some pressing reason it had to be 64. I tend to avoid brand names whenever possible, anyway–why should I advertise somebody’s product and worry about getting jumped on for using a trademarked brand name without sticking the little ‘tm’ in the text?
Another small thing–a native of Illinois, which I am, is an “Illinoisian.” Silent S.
June 24, 2009 at 1:54 am
The dates were important, so she couldn’t have changed that.
As for Illinoian, the parts of the book that were in the maids’ voices were in dialect, so that may have been what that particular character thought people from Illinois called themselves.
Leslie
June 23, 2009 at 11:11 pm
I read a historical fiction book on my Kindle and in the first paragraph it had a wealthy female character being dressed by attendents, and the narrarator said, they would have been “hard pressed” to dress her, blah blah blah. Misplaced? I think so, shame on her and her editor lol….
It is easy to make these mistakes, but the author of The Help said in her postscript she new the year was wrong, so did her editor, she wanted it in there. Art allows for intentional misplacements. You may not like the shake n bake, but it was her choice to include it out of place, a choice made, not an error. Truth is, very few people know when shake n bake was invented to the year. If the author hadn’t put it in the postscript most people would never have noticed, and would it would not pull them out of the story. The songs are probably the more vulernable area.
Your discussion above about your friend from the military is nice, that is a great way to keep from making mistakes. But, writers are allowed creative choices, have some tolerance.
June 24, 2009 at 1:50 am
Thanks for your comment, goyellow.
As I was reading, I thought Shake ‘n Bake was in the wrong date. I remember when my mother was excited about it and if asked to set a date I would have said 1967. I really didn’t think anything more about it until the author brought it up in the postscript and acknowledged that she took liberties with the time period. I might have gone along with that if there had been absolutely no other acceptable alternative but since there was (as noted above) it bugged me. I think what bugged me was the compounding of errors: 1) wrong date; 2) knowing it was the wrong date but not giving a reason why; 3) not choosing a substitute (which could have been done). If she hadn’t mentioned it in the PS (and mentioned that her editor noted it) I probably would have let it slide.
Sorry if I seem picky, I guess it is just the historian/researcher in me showing through. Thanks for reading and commenting, though. Glad you joined in the discussion.
Leslie
June 23, 2009 at 11:23 pm
(edited to add) according to the idiom dictionary the tem “hard pressed” (aside from olive oil) wasn’t used in daily language until mid 1800’s
June 24, 2009 at 1:06 am
Great blog, and agreed on all counts.
You’d think Kathryn Stockett would at least try to explain her use of items inappropriate to the period she wrote about.
Looking forward to your book!
June 24, 2009 at 1:51 am
Hi CS, thanks for dropping by. Good to see you here.
Even with all my comments/complaining, the book is very good and definitely worth reading.
Leslie
June 24, 2009 at 3:57 am
FOr one story I appealed to the assistance of a native Italian speaker to check on the importance of *not* capitalizing the word papa. If you capitalize you’re speaking of the Pope and not your daddy! ;~D
My editors insisted on using the big *p* until I shared the email with them.
Little things….
June 25, 2009 at 3:39 pm
I am appalled at errors like that! (It’s the former reporter in me…)
I don’t necessarily realize things aren’t accurate, but I do love what I pick up from reading historical fiction. I know way more than I ever thought I would about a Rev. War soldier (nickname Swamp Fox) from reading “Celia Garth,” set during the war in the south. And that’s just one example.
For shame on the inaccuracies. That stuff dries me crazy.
June 25, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Hi Liz, thanks for dropping by.
Obviously you and I share a pet peeve on the inaccuracies. LOL. Thanks for your comments and also for the book recommendation. I’ll check it out as I like westerns, too.
Leslie
June 25, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Forgot to mention I’ve been in a bit of a Western phase lately (kind of surprising for me!), having read a Western by Robert Parker, plus one that I think elevates the Western genre to the level of historical fiction. That one — finished that one really recently so it’s on my mind — is called The Shopkeeper and is part of a series. It’s a good read, and you don’t have to like Westerns to enjoy it. I must admit, that, given that I don’t know tons about that era, that I can’t vouch for incredible accuracy! But people will enjoy it, that I can say — and nothing stood out as being wrong, in terms of details.
June 25, 2009 at 4:11 pm
I just followed your link and — hooray! The Shopkeeper is out in a Kindle edition. I just downloaded a sample chapter and look forward to reading it.
Leslie
June 29, 2009 at 5:33 pm
Great! How do you like your Kindle? I saw a guy at the gym using his while riding an exercise bike, and he really likes it. He let me look at it and it’s interesting. For me, it’s just too pricey at the moment.
July 6, 2009 at 4:44 pm
I love it. It’s a great device. I read on it everyday and am reading voraciously again like I did in my youth.
Leslie
June 28, 2009 at 2:46 am
I agree. To acknowledge the errors, made it their presence even worse. It was like saying, “I’m lazy, I admit it…get over it and buy my book.
I did enjoy the book, however, that being said, I would have liked for the author to delve into the male characters a bit more. With the exception of one abusive husband, there was no male substance so to speak.
The book was missing a little something. I think it was characters. For a book which included high society life; Mississippi was made to sound very boring.
June 28, 2009 at 2:48 am
I agree. To acknowledge the errors, made it their presence even worse. It was like saying, “I’m lazy, I admit it…get over it and buy my book.”
I did enjoy the book, however, that being said, I would have liked for the author to delve into the male characters a bit more. With the exception of one abusive husband, there was no male substance so to speak.
The book was missing a little something. I think it was characters. For a book which included high society life; Mississippi was made to sound very boring.
June 28, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Hi sjc, thanks for dropping by!
I agree, the male characters could have used some fleshing out. They were pretty two-dimensional. But maybe that was intentional…Skeeter wasn’t interested and the maids really only interacted with the women. The men did exist on the periphery.
Leslie
August 6, 2009 at 10:36 pm
I never understood this obssession with people demanding that works of historical fiction be completely accurate. Because it won’t happen. Well, let me put it this way. It will be a rare occurrence.
When reading several books on how to write fiction, I came across several advice. One of them was . . . if a particular fact got in the way of your story, disregard it. The story is more important.
I’m still confused as to why more people are obssessed with historical accuracy in fiction or movies, instead of dealing with historical accuracy in non-fiction books . . . like school textbooks.
August 7, 2009 at 9:57 am
I would personally say that ignoring the facts was very bad advice if you want to be able to claim to be writing historical fiction. The claim that a book is a work of historical fiction is a claim that the story might not have happened (and therefore it’s fiction) but that it is a story set in a recognizable historical period (and therefore the historical details must be right.)
I think that if you just ignore the facts when they don’t suit you, then you are not writing ‘historical’ fiction, you’re writing something else – which might be great fun, but it isn’t historical.
August 7, 2009 at 10:29 am
I don’t think people are necessarily ‘obsessed’ – they just like to feel they’ve not been short changed.
I can watch Chariots of Fire and enjoy it, knowing they’ve taken little liberties with the storyline, but they haven’t insulted me by having the runners using starting blocks or listening to ipods. Jurassic park is unwatchable because you can drive a bus through the holes in both the plot and the science. It’s as if the makers don’t care.
Same with a book that’s full of historical howlers – each one of them gives me a jolt when I read it. As far as I’m concerned, some of the inaccuracies are so extreme they’re an insult to the reader.
Charlie
August 10, 2009 at 2:30 pm
“I can watch Chariots of Fire and enjoy it, knowing they’ve taken little liberties with the storyline, but they haven’t insulted me by having the runners using starting blocks or listening to ipods.”
The character in CHARIOTS OF FIRE may not have been using ipods, but it still wasn’t completely historically accurate, was it? Which is what I’m trying to point out. You’re going to find inaccuracies of all kinds in movies, television, plays and novels. In fact, you just might find it in history and other scholarly books, as well. But when you find it in scholarly works, THAT is when I start to worry.
Jurassic park is unwatchable because you can drive a bus through the holes in both the plot and the science. It’s as if the makers don’t care.
Isn’t JURASSIC PARK science-fiction?
August 10, 2009 at 8:20 pm
Yep, SCIENCE Fiction, which means the science has to have a chance of working, especially as it’s set on Earth.
I can suspend credulity enough to swallow DNA surviving for 64 million = years (it can’t) or cloning animals from remnant DNA (not yet possible) but to combine dinosaur (reptile) DNA with amphibian? A step too far (like the m/m historical stories which have two blokes marrying in church in 19th century England).
At least a step too far for my reading/viewing tastes.