The Hidden Man (28 page)

F
ANS OF HISTORICAL FICTION
tend to be eclectic people. That egalitarian quality may also be found in their tendency to value a wide breadth of experience in life, just as they do within the pages of a book. The hobbies of such a person, for example, are often counterintuitive to what an observer would be likely to guess from their appearance. While that does not necessarily mean that readers of historical fiction can be expected to be stunt skydivers, they are nevertheless people who value a thoroughly rounded combination of choices within their daily existence. I will generally predict that the range of that person’s choices will be wide, from one to another, whether their specific interests are many or few.

It will not matter if a fan of historical fiction is a world traveler or is someone unable to leave their home, hospital, or prison cell. In any case, there is a particular kind of satisfaction being sought out by that person whenever they open a book. That search and the needs that drive it will tend to set this reader apart from other sorts of readers, by virtue of specific things that resonate so deeply that the reader becomes passionate over the story. Such a reader lives with a quiet and ongoing search that automatically activates whenever they enter a bookstore. The internal alarm bell goes off at the moment that their attention is captured by a specific book.

From that point on, we fans of historical fiction know how the pattern plays: We pick up a book because we have heard good things about the story or the author. Maybe we just pick it up because we’ve been grabbed by the title or by the cover art. No matter, this is only the opening salvo.

In searching for that elusive Good Read, we may not always insist that a novel be set in a distant past, but we certainly want to feel that the book will deliver the particular sort of good stuff that we get from historical fiction.

The good stuff is whatever can catch
your
eye and then hold
your
attention.

We’ve all been there, by design or by chance: that moment when we suddenly realize that we’ve just picked up a real one. Such a book will have an initial presentation so compelling that we feel obligated to investigate. We open it, we scan, we skip around, then finally pick a passage and actually
read
it, slowly, carefully drinking it in. On a lucky day, we find ourselves hesitant to believe but soon pleased to discover that there is real content there, so effective that it transports us straight to the checkout line. This scenario begs the question: What elements must a contemporary novel have, then, to satisfy the true fan of historical fiction?

Pssst…don’t look at me while I talk, just listen: Everybody in the book world would love to know the answer to that. Everybody. From those crazy kids in the mailroom to the proverbial cigar-sucking CEO lounging aboard a cash-laden yacht while using satellite communications to keep a sharp eye out for the next megabestseller. Everybody.

So why ask? What possible function can such a question have, other than to unnecessarily harsh one’s literary mellow?

All right, none. But even though nobody has the entire answer, there are four definite clues to its attributes, along with one absolute must-have for any written story:

1. We Don’t Trust the Scenery
—Let’s begin by agreeing
not
to assume that the trappings of the past are enough to capture a reader’s interest, no matter how fresh, exotic, or original the distant setting may be. If that were so, publishers would burn up the presses to keep up with the demand for travel tomes and history textbooks.

2. We Do Trust the Subtext
—Historical fiction offers its readers the potential delight of discovering familiar human problems in disparate times and places. There is an innate magnetism between a reader and any character that arises when the character displays aspects of personality that remain essentially the same across spans of time and space. In some instances, the thoughts, feelings, and reactions experienced by these characters can so profoundly resonate with our own that there is a comforting familiarity even in the midst of a setting’s overt strangeness. That “so near but so far” aspect of a story sets up a natural dramatic tension.

And such things are either present in a book or they are not. We can verify the answer with a thorough online peek or bookstore skim.

3. Dialogue Binds Us All
—We want good dialogue in historical fiction, perhaps more so than with other novels, because dialogue is so effective at communicating the core meanings of archaic phrases and mannerisms. To expand on the earlier point: The foreignness communicated by historical books creates flashes of tension within us, whether conscious or unconscious. And yet in the next instant, the familiarity of the
behavior
evoked by those same foreign words or phrases releases this tension by removing its sense of otherness.

Therefore when we read engaging historical fiction, a silent thrill ride takes place in the back of our minds, speeding along a track made out of lines of text. This ride affects us even if it occurs on an unconscious level.

Example: Fans of historical fiction are always pleased when an author employs terms or phrases that may be outside the modern lexicon, but are nevertheless perfectly clear to the reader by virtue of artful application. Thus when good dialogue is strange to the ear but familiar to the heart, it does a valuable service by entertaining and educating within the same pages.

Any story that accomplishes this without resorting to overt preaching has a touch o’ the old magic, does it not? It’s the stuff that all of us who love historical fiction come sniffing around the library stacks to find—ditto our favorite bricks-and-mortar bookstore or favorite online bookseller.

THE FAMILY CONNECTION

Our one and only must-have is the Family Connection.

There is a deep and abiding sense of
belonging
that we as a species continue to prove that we need. Issues and questions about a character’s family are always compelling forces, no matter what time period the story uses. Furthermore, they will be there whether the author consciously deals with them or whether they simply take the form of a deafening silence when carelessly ignored.

Today’s reading audience knows that insights into any character’s true personality will come across best in the form of specific answers to the question of how they were raised. And especially how they reacted to those events and circumstances, as well as to how well they handle them, or not, today.

The family is older than any form of literature and as ancient as humanity itself. Not only is it largely responsible for the survival of the race, but as a phenomenon it is so successful that most mammals live in a family structure. Some may alternatively live within a herd structure, but that is a form of traveling extended family.

Individuals who cleave to neither one must be expected to do poorly, unless they are truly exceptional specimens. This is true in the wilds of the jungle or the terrors of the company meeting room.

We tend to call the human examples “loners,” with a hint of condescension. The attitude provides the added bonus of sparing us the effort of applying our judgment or empathy to any strenuous degree, since it is in the nature of condescension that the receiver is regarded as unworthy of a better effort. Some people employ the downward gaze at any “loner” whether or not that particular loner has a criminal state of mind, or is merely an eccentric who lives by a recognizable ethos, and who is going to do the right thing according to that ethos whether or not the popular crowd plays along.

Loner
is only one letter away from
loser.
People seem to sense that unhappy fact, even if they don’t play out the spelling. A modern author of either gender can create a male hero, but giving him mere “loner” status no longer confers the mystique that it once did. And while changing the character to a woman might make her seem slightly more distinctive (if the plot is male-dominated), the same problem arises as soon as the novelty wears off.

A genuine loner today, however, could also be that rare and yet certainly extant enlightened solo female who neither seeks nor avoids pairing. At her core, this character knows that she will be all right, either way,
so long as her heart is otherwise open.
We know it along with her. Readers may rightly expect to come across women like her inside the pages of today’s fiction, whether the story’s setting is historical or not.

Moreover, nowadays our pale rider may elect to avoid any sort of “showdown” altogether—and sneak in, instead. Many readers today would applaud that pragmatic choice. I would. Especially if I were next in line to walk the dangerous point.

Sure, sure. Some will disagree: random contrarians, Internet flamers. But I say that today’s democracy of readership will respond less to a “guns and guts” approach because we as a society have been forced by experience to learn an appreciation for stealth over bluster.

All of this brings us to the truncated adage employed in the title. We can read stories set in any exotic time and place, and so long as a story involves human beings, “the more things change,” the more the writer is confronted with the challenge of what to do about a given character’s family.

It makes no difference if the family members themselves never make an appearance and have no direct connection to the plot. There was a life lived inside that character’s family walls, and it will be part and parcel of the character’s background, hence also part of any decision or reaction that this character makes.

This circle will not be broken. Regardless of the wailing and gnashing of teeth that our public representatives frequently perform to convince us that the family is failing, both the potentially positive influence of the family and the negative consequences of toxic families are everywhere to be seen.

What’s failing in our time is the white picket fence image of “family,” like the one born in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century and lasted until approximately the time that the oil began to run out. Plenty of people who were around at the time never saw it themselves. For one reason or another they were never able to buy into an arbitrary ideal invented by advertisers to sell real estate.

Suburban, one-job, two-parent nuclear families were simply one of the countless ways that humans have grouped over the ages. Of course, modern suburban life also ushered in the age of young men with stomach ulcers, three-martini-lunch alcoholics, and a leap in the national divorce rates.

There are no great stories of domestic bliss that have come to the fore among those who were able to buy in and live the dream for the handful of decades that it lasted. Now, the shifts of economics and public policy that have put most parents back to work, full-time, chipping away at family togetherness, are cited for their destructive effect upon the family.

Upon one picture of the family, yes. But every day, the sheer volume of phone calls, e-mails, and instant messages that get traded reminds us that the family drive is perennial. People trying to describe a deep sense of bonding shared by those who are not physically related will often refer to the group as “family.”

We can separate people from one another in any manner possible, but they will immediately begin to reassert clandestine connections. They will do this in the face of whatever outrageous stresses that events can place upon human existence. They are continuing to do it despite media campaigns designed to distort the world’s image of “family” into a salable corporate commodity.

Therefore, in any story—no matter what era—if a child character has no parents, he or she will nonetheless have
parental figures.
So who are they, then? And are they real or imaginary? They must absolutely be present as influential forces in the daily planning and decision-making process that this personality goes through.

Of course, the dark side of today’s shifting picture of what constitutes a family is that in the absence of positive and healthy versions of family connections and loyalties, the drive for family will still assert itself. And we all know that the substitute families who fill in the vacuum go on to account for the rise of violent gangs and major crimes upon individuals.

The depth of the brutality is often carried out in the name of a twisted loyalty to a group that may represent the only family connection that the perpetrator has ever known. Even in that extreme case, the distorted family and its poisonous effects (such as the demands placed in return for membership) will define and outline that individual’s personality. Every writer has to look for it; every reader will be let down if they don’t find it.

So we see the beauty of the full title to this dossier. The adage begins with what sounds almost like a warning, “
The more things change,
” but then comes the comforting conclusion: “
the more they stay the same.
”

The settings found in historical fiction are grand pageants, flickering parades of fascination devices. They conceal a simple truth.