the literary life HISTORICAL FICTIONSEPT OCT 2019 32strand, which starts in 1914, that is
incontrovertibly “historical.”
Kline: I had the same experience with
my novel Orphan Train. Only a third
of it is set in the past—from 1920 to
the mid 1940s. The rest takes place in
the present day. A Piece of the World and
Tin Ticket, though, are firmly rooted in
other eras.
Gornick: Going back to the Chee an-
ecdote, with Orphan Train, did people
ask you, “Are you giving up literature
for genre fiction?”
Kline: The question of genre is an in-
teresting one. A number of years ago
I set out to write a fast-paced romp,
what Graham Greene defined, in his
own work, as an “entertainment.”
When that novel, The Way Life Should
Be, came out it was sometimes included
on lists of “chick lit,” which made me
shudder. I felt strangely buttonholed,
shoved into a female ghetto, the very
name of which was belittling.
I think there’s a distinction to be
made between historical romance and
historical literary fiction—though
Wikipedia confusingly, and wrongly,
includes The Scarlet Letter and Absa-
lom, Absalom! under “historical ro-
mance.” Certainly many writers set
out to publish “historical fiction” about
larger-than-life people, landmarks,
and occurrences—real-life royalty;
significant historical events like the
French Revolution and World War
II—that focus primarily on romance
and intrigue. These novels tend to be
chockablock with historical detail, as
a sort of education for the reader. As
Chee said of Gore Vidal’s novel 1876 ,
“No powder, no coin, no button misses
his eye.” In writing about people from
different eras, I’m less interested in
verisimilitude than in exploring ways
that the past resembles the present.
I want readers to feel immersed in
the story, as if it’s taking place now,
whether it’s set in 1840 or 1940 or
today. You have to do the research, of
course, but how do you keep only the
pieces you absolutely need? A lot of my
process is about paring down unnec-
essary details, retaining the ones that
illuminate character and place.Gornick: I hadn’t considered that by
writing fiction that is partially set in
the past, I was at risk of my novel being
deemed “genre fiction” until another
literary writer politely told me she was
wary of our sharing an event lest her
book be ghettoized. Chee aside, I don’t
think this is an issue that concerns
male writers. I doubt George Saunders
worried that he could compromise his
literary credentials with Lincoln in the
Bardo or that Anthony Doerr feared
that All the Light We Cannot See might
be classified as a historical romance.Kline: Or that Ian McEwan had such
worries about Atonement.Gornick: One of the pleasures of pre-
paring for this conversation was the
reading we did together on the topic
of historical fiction. What are some of
the ideas that came up for you after
spending time with these essays?Kline: I had a few revelations. In her
New Yorker piece titled “Just the Facts,
Ma’am,” Jill Lepore writes, “Fiction
can do what history doesn’t but should.
It can tell the story of ordinary people.
It’s the history of private life, the his-
tory of obscure men.” I realized that
this is exactly what I did in my three
latest novels: Orphan Train tells the
story of immigrants in destitute cir-
cumstances; A Piece of the World is about
an ordinary woman, Christina Olson,
living in rural Maine, who became
the subject of Andrew Wyeth’s best-
known painting; Tin Ticket is about
poor women sentenced to deportation.
Lepore goes on to write: “Who are
these obscure men? Well, a lot of them
are women.” Recently an interviewer
asked why, in my later novels, I write
only from the female perspective. I
told him that lately I’ve been preoc-
cupied with stories about people who
have historically been on the fringes