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a tiny rant about history books
Oct. 20th, 2013 10:12 pmThings to keep in mind if you are ever writing historical nonfiction:
1. A history book is not the place to grind axes about current political or cultural issues. I don't care how relevant you think they are. You sold your book as history, not as contemporary trend analysis. Every word you spend blathering on about whatever bugs have crawled up your ass is one fewer word spent on what I opened your book to learn, and consequently a wasted moment of my life I can never retrieve.
2. If you treat every historical person who crosses your page with sneering disdain, put down your pen until you find a sense of charity toward human fallibility, the ability to imagine motives other than the glibly villainous, and some goddamn perspective. I don't care how witty or morally superior you think you are. You sold your book as history, not as the bastard lovechild of a Hollywood gossip site and a cranky tabloid newspaper op-ed.
...
This brought to you by one of the three library books I acquired yesterday by way of background research for my Yuletide fic. The other two are fine, and I have hopes of two more I put hold requests on, but this one makes me want to magically reach through time and space and shake the writer until he revises his manuscript from the ground up.
(And now I am going to bed, because I am coming down with what promises to be a nasty cold and I'd like to sleep through as much of it as possible. Bleh.)
1. A history book is not the place to grind axes about current political or cultural issues. I don't care how relevant you think they are. You sold your book as history, not as contemporary trend analysis. Every word you spend blathering on about whatever bugs have crawled up your ass is one fewer word spent on what I opened your book to learn, and consequently a wasted moment of my life I can never retrieve.
2. If you treat every historical person who crosses your page with sneering disdain, put down your pen until you find a sense of charity toward human fallibility, the ability to imagine motives other than the glibly villainous, and some goddamn perspective. I don't care how witty or morally superior you think you are. You sold your book as history, not as the bastard lovechild of a Hollywood gossip site and a cranky tabloid newspaper op-ed.
...
This brought to you by one of the three library books I acquired yesterday by way of background research for my Yuletide fic. The other two are fine, and I have hopes of two more I put hold requests on, but this one makes me want to magically reach through time and space and shake the writer until he revises his manuscript from the ground up.
(And now I am going to bed, because I am coming down with what promises to be a nasty cold and I'd like to sleep through as much of it as possible. Bleh.)
