Interesting exchange today between Kate Grenville and Michael Cathcart at an Adelaide Writers’ Week event. The exchange focused on – amongst other things – writing history in fiction, and, on historical novels. Michael spoke about his difficulty with Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang. He said that because fact and fiction were interwoven within the narrative he found it difficult to know what sort of things it was that was reading. He also found it difficult to decipher which bits were the precious historical facts – previously unknown to him – that should now add to his body of knowledge about Kelly et. al. and which were the fanciful bits which he needn’t add to his body of knowledge but merely enjoy as fiction. This difficultly in deciphering what was fact and what was fiction meant that Michael could not trust the narrative and narrator, and this, despite the brilliance of the writer’s execution of the narrative, diminished the experience of reading the book. It seemed as if Carey were being accused of misleading the reader, in this case, Michael. Does this accusation hold?

Kate tended to agree with Michael, but stressed that her own use of historical fact was clearly for fictional purposes and that this has always been communicated.

Does this mean that so long as a novelist announces that he or she is writing fiction, then he or she cannot be accused of insincerity, or worse, of lying?

But why would a novelist, even a novelist writing history or parts of history, need this disclaimer?

Novelists, novelise. That is what they do.

Adelaide Writers' Week 2012, Authors, Books, Fiction, History, Literature