The October edition of Common-place is out.
There is a nice piece on history and fiction by Suzanne Lebsock, writing of her decision to stick to the ‘facts’, not to make up anything about the history she wanted to tell - despite the frustrations caused by the patchiness of original sources (cf. Ken McGoogan’s justifications for making stuff up when it suited him). There are moments that seem to suggest a slightly naive belief in the neutrality of historical ‘fact’ (vs politicised fiction/spin…); but the excellent point she makes is that sometimes truth can be stranger, more unexpected and implausible (according to stereotyped expectations) than any fiction and that invention may undermine the credibility of those truths. If she invented details, and events, to suit her story, to make her life easier, it could become all too easy for readers to dismiss, for example, the brilliance of a young uneducated black woman in 1895 - on trial for her life and too poor to hire an attorney - vigorously defending herself in a courtroom, cleverly forcing an admission of perjury from a witness.
Would it not be an option to invent some small details: the color of Pokey’s dress, for example, or the tilt of her hat? My sense is that if historians want to be believed on the big things, we should exercise care on the little ones. Had I concocted something unusual about the courthouse itself–say, the unique outdoor staircase that led to the courtroom on the second floor–why would a reader buy my account of Pokey Barnes’s performance in that same courtroom? I might have attempted to add drama by matching the weather to the mood, tossing in the occasional dark and stormy night, for instance. But then why should readers believe that men whose class and color qualified them as “rednecks” risked their lives to prevent their black neighbors from being lynched?
Anne G Myles considers the modern resonances of early modern Barbary captive narratives; Paul Heinegg and Henry B Hoff find free African Americans in colonial America; Michelle L Craig reports on the difficulties and rewards of archival research in Dominica. Among other things.
Go see for yourself.