(no subject)

Today I saw Captain Thunderbolt's pistol. It was class excursion day to Goulburn and thankfully, not a difficult one, because I was operating through a migraine. Tonight I have to work (slowly, because energy levels are low) so it's a long, long day. But at least I saw Captain Thunderbolt's gun.




PS My word for the day is gewohnheitsrecht. I need to find ways of using it!

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Today the IHR conference looks at historians who are also novelists. I am doing much biting of tongue, but that's only from the introduction. Things are going to get more sophisticated. I'm certain of it.

This is where I admit that I do not believe desperately in the modern invention of the novel. Culture is not so sudden. Nor is genre. It's creeping and complicated and dynamic.

At any rate, at 11 am UK time Ian Mortimer is going to tell me why historians should write fiction. I shall listen very attentively. Although I did think we (those of us who want to, at least) were already writing fiction. There must be a subtitle I'm missing.

Yesterday's pieces (which I slept though and taught through) include an opinion piece by Peter Robinson talking about where writers and historians work together. It's a very short opinion piece and represents a perfect and straightforward world. I wish he had been given 3,000 words and the opportunity to explore the relationship more fully. I would love to hear him give a regular academic paper on the subject. Then I'd love to analyse it and contrast his experience with my own.

What I suspect is that each interaction between fiction writer and historian is unique and that each time a writer researches history for the fiction, their reaction with the past and even with the researching historian is a key element in the shape and feel of the novel. I've explored a bunch of the related issues with writers for my research project a few years ago* and was rather looking forward to hearing what another historian who works with fiction writers had done. Maybe another time.

I haven't had time to listen to more podcasts yet, and the podcasts seem to be where the really interesting stuff is. Roll on the weekend and more time!





*which made it into a couple of published thingies and a couple of conference papers, but I really need to ask more writers my questions and to expand the whole thing - this is the conclusion I've come to in the past few weeks, now I have more contexts - it would make a great postdoc project, I suspect