Creating Van Gogh reaches 100

As of last Friday's post (5/14/10), Creating Van Gogh reached the 100 count. In almost exactly eight months, I've come to you with 100 thoughts about historical fiction generally and/or my historical novel Yellow in particular. Yes, I've taken a few detours on occasion--e.g., to express excitement over a new publication, or to thank someone who helped me with the blog, or to report on AWP, or to gripe about political/financing problems encountered by the National Writing Project--but for the most part I've tried to keep the discussion focused on the essential themes of the blog, the themes that followers and visitors are interested in reading and commenting about. I can't say exactly when I expected to reach 100 posts--or if I necessarily did expect to reach 100--but I'm relieved and gratified that I've made it. I know that a few--okay, several--of my posts are longer than average, but thanks for sticking with me through them. I hope that means you find my questions and/or commentary and/or anedotes relevant and interesting, especially if you're in the middle of developing or writing your own historical novel. I haven't been shy about detailing my research trip to France last summer--in fact, post 99 and post 100 did just that--and while some of those posts probably read like travelogues I hope I've made the point that I was there to see, hear, smell, read about, walk through, run through, drive through, draw and photograph specific places that Van Gogh either lived in or visited. No matter where I was, the man himself was never far from my thoughts. And these days the France trip is very much in mind, since it was this time last year that I was slogging, stomping, and wine drinking my way through that remarkable, beautiful country.

I must admit that it was the example of my wife's blog Wordamour and her simple love of blogging that encouraged me to start Creating Van Gogh in the first place. Let's give credit where credit is due. And when I did start, I began with the idea that I needed to post something--anything--everyday. Well, within a week or two I knew that would prove impossible. After all, I was working on my novel! But I've tried to maintain due diligence, and I'm proud to say that even as I came off my fall sabbatical and was thrust into the grind of 4 classes per semester teaching I've actually logged more posts from January to the present then I did from September through December. Who knew? I worried over Christmas break that I might not be able to keep posting at all! (How Erika Dreifus updates her terrific Practicing Writing blog every Monday to Friday is beyond me. I salute you, Erika.) And since I've started the blog I can report some gratifying progress on different fronts. My novel, which back in September had just started a significant and drastic new round of cutting, editing, revising, and reshaping, is almost done. (Really this time.) It's so much tighter now, so much surer, so much more of what it was trying to be all along, largely because I've had to confront and resolve so many of the issues that I've written about on this blog. Since September I've also made some great literary friends through this blog, including Anne Whitehouse, who after a series of communications about a Van Gogh poem she published, kindly asked me to review her book of poems, Blessings and Curses. (Click on the link to read about the book.) Thanks for the confidence, Anne. It's meeting people like her that is the true benefit of any blog, or any online life. I hope more posts, and more such people, are in my future. Thanks everybody.

Mississippi Women

Following Erika Dreifus's recommendation on her excellent blog Practicing Writing, I picked up Kathryn Stockett's novel The Help recently. You've probably heard of the novel already. Not only is it a major bestseller--a literary book that has "broken out"-- but it is already being developed into a major motion picture. I heartily recommend The Help. Although you hear this sort of thing said all the time, I literally "could not put it down." It explores a flash point issue--the relationship between black house servants and their white employees--at a flash point time in our history--the early 1960s, when civil rights struggles were becoming white hot. These various tensions are expertly explored and manipulated by Stockett. Most impressive is how Stockett manages to capture a variety of white and black voices. I believe every one of her characters. I feel them as individuals not types.

My own definition of historical fiction is fiction that is set in a time prior to the author's birth. For the author, therefore, that time period is not simply remembered and described but a part of history to be evoked through imagination and research. That's a crucial difference. Stockett did grow up in Jackson, Mississippi--the setting for her novel--and did have personal experience with African-American help who worked for white employers (she recounts her own history in an afterword), but given that she was not alive in 1962-1964, I'll call her novel historical. Besides, given that the 60s were one of the most contentious and important decades America ever lived through, it's hard not to see any novel set in that time as evoking history. All that said, I must hold Stockett's feet to the fire for one or two instances of historical inaccuracy. For the most part she does superbly well, mentioning and/or dramatically using the events of 1962, 1963, and 1964 in credible and careful fashion. I did notice a big anachronism, however. One of her characters--in the summer of 1963--disparagingly describes a group of Yankee civil rights activists as "hippies" who flash peace signs all the time. No. Not in 1963. Not before Kennedy's death. The peace movement, and the peace sign, came out of the anti-Vietnam war movement. And as long as Kennedy was president, Vietnam was a minor footnote on the American political landscape. Civil rights was the much more prominent issue. Not until Johnson became president and greatly escalated our involvement in Vietnam--and the number of American deaths became noticeable--were there any peace protesters or peace signs. Certainly, "hippies" is a purely late-60s coinage. Just looking at photos of the northerners who traveled to the south in the early 60s to assist with voter registration reveals that these were not "hippies." (Not even the Beatles had very long hair in 1963.)

It's a minor flaw in a very good book that demonstrates few historical missteps, but given the glaring anachronism it did stick out to, and disappoint, me. It's an example of how easy it is for even a talented writer of historical fiction to go awry if she's not careful. Even so, go buy and read The Help.