But whether you go backward or forward, something that always throws me off is emotional anachronism. This is actually a pretty common problem, because an author is, almost by definition, writing for his or her contemporaries, and therefore often providing them with characters they can relate to. Our heroine should be spunky, our hero fiercely independent, our genius thinks outside the box. The characters we're supposed to hate stand for things we dislike--control, oppression, greed. Our protagonists yearn, dream big, want more. I would expect nothing less from my characters than to recognize in them the same ambitions and fears that I have, translated into their own set of circumstances.
This isn't always realistic, though. Take Inside Out
Now, they have their own system of timekeeping, and a little math makes it clear that we're talking 1500-ish years in the future (give or take a few hundred, but you get the idea). Education is minimal, propaganda rules all. There are a lot of details in this story that don't follow from this information. Things like why Trella is even aware of the fact that there's an old way to count years (okay, maybe that was thrown in for the less mathematically inclined among us, but still, there are other details that she knows from our 'past'). Why are all the scrubs suddenly seething with dissatisfaction, if this is all they've known for generations? There's no indication of the incremental changes to thought that ended the thousand years of mental torpor that kept serfs out in the cold in Europe. There's no Renaissance to lead into the Revolutions--just suddenly it's there. Where do these characters come by their subversion?
The answer is that we, the readers, respect it, and expect it. We believe that we would not be cowed, we would not be sheep, even if we had never known anything else. We picture our current selves put into a new environment, because we cannot imagine who we would be in another world. I'm having trouble with the authenticity here.
Going the other way--away from familiarity and into realism--has its own problems. The other book I'm in the middle of (have been for a while; now I'm waiting for the library to lend it to me again) is The Owl Killers
The children are hungry and needy and shameless about doing what they have to to live. The priest is intolerant, because he doesn't know how to be anything else. The few characters who are somewhat outside of society--the women in their communal house, the bookish daughter of a local lord--appear to us just as odd as they would to their neighbors--standoffish, selfish, stiff, strange. This world doesn't honor the same traits we do, and doesn't leave any room to be anyone I can see myself in. The book is authentic, but a little hard to read for all that.
It's a hard call to say where I come down on this issue. Emotional resonance, and the truth that carries with it? Or historical truth, and the new ways of thinking that opens up, hopefully followed by new emotional resonances of their own? Or maybe (isn't this always the answer?) something in between.
1 comment:
Firethorn is another book that's a little too realistic for comfort. It takes historical romances about odd peasant girls falling in love with noblemen and turns them on their heads, as she becomes a camp follower (basically a prostitute) and her relationship with her nobleman is little more than mutual need. Not enjoyable, per se, but interesting.
Post a Comment