I have been caught up in reading historical fiction the past few weeks, mostly at the gym, as I have been limiting my fiction binges to the exercise bicycle, but even so, I have done little other reading. I am still working my way slowly through the November Atlantic Monthly for example, even though I have had it over a week. I have been working my way through Mary McCarthy essays at bedtime, but so slowly that I think I have been on the same essay for a week now, after starting off at great speed and reading one or two essays a night. All things come in waves I suppose.
The fiction was fun – a good read as opposed to good writing, but every now and then that is all that is necessary, just to involve oneself in a story and get lost for a little while. I know I tend to get too wrapped up in the stories I read, always have, probably at this point, assuming I am half-way through my life and haven’t yet mended my ways, always will.
I got too wrapped up in television as a child as well. I know it worried my parents at times – I would dream about things I saw on tv – and I still have to be careful not to get wrapped up in silly television programs. To achieve that I tend to avoid them. I suppose this is a character flaw I inherited from my father who was always more of a dreamer than a doer. When I was young I wanted to act and I don’t think I was all that bad at it, strange as it may seem, being shy may not have been a hindrance. I have always found it easier to pretend to be something else than to be myself in front of other people. I don’t play those games anymore, although I did in my youth, and I got myself in trouble a couple of times with people reading more into the role I was playing than I ever intended. I suppose that I now come off as more standoffish than anything else, although not intentionally, because I am still not totally comfortable with myself.
Back to the topic at hand: I have always had a weakness for historical fiction, especially about the Tudor and Elizabethan periods. I am sure this colored my choice of 16th and 17th century literature in college even though more recent literature was much more popular.
The two novels I have been reading, The Other Bolyn Girl and The Virgin’s Lover, both by Phillipa Gregory have been highly entertaining and have fleshed out characterizations based, at least loosely, on historical fact. At any rate the stories have been tied in to historical fact enough that they do not seem completely off base, and the story line is strong enough and they are well enough told tales to keep one involved. They also do not sin too much by indulging in the modern tendency to make historical characters think and act like modern people with our mores and values. That, it seems to me, has always been the thing people have the most time understanding about history, that people of a different time cannot be judged for not thinking like people of today.
I have always been able to read popular fiction and enjoy it and still appreciate more literary fiction, although many people I know seem to fall in one camp or the other: the “popular fiction” crowd and the “literature” crowd. I have always maintained that an even a mediocre novel is more entertaining than a mediocre television show or movie. But I am not completely indiscriminate, I can follow a good story line, but if the writing is too terrible I just can’t get through it, and some marginal tales I probably skim more than actually read as the text is not worth savoring. Still, there have been some popular novels in recent years, and some popular writers, who have completely lost me and I wonder how people read them. I suppose other think the same of me sometimes. If this were not the case, probably far fewer books would be sold.
