Ever since my youth it has disturbed me that of the literary works that survived their own epoch, so many dealt with historical rather than contemporary subjects.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Some critics said, 'Hey, why are you writing historical novels?' I say they're not historical, they're contemporary, because people walking around who lived through this, even a little bit, they carry it inside. The contemporary isn't just what you can see now.
After closely examining my conscience, I venture to state that in my historical novels I intended the content to be just as modern and up-to-date as in the contemporary ones.
You can write a great book and be ignored. Literary history is full of classics that were under-appreciated in their own time.
However, the difficulties and pleasures of the writing itself are similar for a novel with a historical setting and a novel with a contemporary setting, as far as I'm concerned.
We've all faced the charge that our novels are history lite, and to some extent, that's true. Yet for some, historical fiction is a way into reading history proper.
I'm a big believer in pairing classics with contemporary literature, so students have the opportunity to see that literature is not a cold, dead thing that happened once but instead a vibrant mode of storytelling that's been with us a long time - and will be with us, I hope, for a long time to come.
As a former English major, I have always been fascinated by the connections between literature and history.
My books fall in the wobbly middle between historical fiction and historical romance.
I'm not a great reader of historical fiction; it's not my favourite genre.
I have no desire to write historical anything or futuristic anything - I want to find a way to get at the essence of what it's like to be alive now. The reason why great novels from centuries ago are still great is because that's what they were doing; it's like a message from another culture.
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