ANZ LitLovers LitBlog

Live blogging – tidied up typos & incoherent stuff later at home. 

The Chair for this session was Alan Attwood (whose novel Burke’s Soldier was about Bourke & Wills -a fabulous book which I read some years ago).  His guests were

• Marshall Browne whose novel The Eye of the Abyss has a main character who is an auditor in Nazi Germany;
• Robert Williams whose most recent crime novel series  began with The Blind Man of Seville has Spanish modern history as a background; and  
• Glen David Gould whose Carter Beats the Devil (2001) featured Harry Houdini, and whose most recent one is about Charlie Chapman.  He describes the history in his books as ‘history with colouring around the borders.’

Since all these books have settings in the past, the discussion focussed on how faithful to history the authors might need to be, and how sometimes there are resonances in the present.  Williams said he couldn’t resist including a Seville bombing in his book after the Madrid bombings. The Eye of the Abyss features a bust of Adolf Hitler in the bank.  Goebbels makes an appearance in the novel appears because of his propaganda role at the time, and Goering had assets in the bank so he’s included but Browne chose leave Hitler merely in the background because he seemed a ‘bit too dangerous’. 

Starting points: what was the catalyst?  ForDavid Gould interest was triggered when he read President Harding’s biography (which we have at home, I think) and he became interested in the issue of what Harding was to do about US soldiers in Russia.  Somehow this became the story of Harry Houdini in Carter Beats the Devil.  (I missed what the connection between these two events was, maybe I’d need to read the book to know).  Wilson’s central character, the Spanish detective, has featured in a number of books by now, so the author feels he knows him pretty well.  The journey of the first book is about bringing to the surface an issue that this character is  denying, and the succeeding books about ‘putting him back together’.  Browne’s trilogy set in Melbourne in the 1880s and 1890s came about because he was fascinated by the idea of Marvellous Melbourne, only 50 years old and yet one of the richest cities in the world.

A juggling act: does history sometimes get in the way of the story? There’s a  need to maintain narrative drive without losing the historic background.  Browne is more interested in the characters and the narrative  - the historical background has to create a realistic setting and ought to be reasonably authentic but should not take over.  Gold wants to be able to take what he reads on trust – Roberts thinks that research ensures that the facts are right (but I think this is a bit naive and a simplistic view of history because facts can be slippery and are sometimes distorted by bias).  For Browne, using a real character was a bit of a worry because private conversations had to be invented when this character took on quite a big role in the story.  This is risky because historians can critique it.  Browne’s background is in banking, and he has been able to sometimes use his own ‘personal archive’, for example, when he was writing  a story about a Mallee bank that he knew really well from his own experience. 

With research, when is it enough?  Wilson says it’s when he feels comfortale with it, and he usually only needs to use about 10% of what he’s done.  It can be a bit never-ending because there’s always more to know, and sometimes in the writing a need for more information crops up as you go.  Browne says there’s targetted and free range research – the latter can lead you up blind alleys – like an iceberg you only use the tip of it, but it helps the writer to absorb a lot of atmosphere.  Wilson says you can tell when  a writer has lost the plot a bit and is writing about the research rather than the story.

Crime novels, mysteries and thrillers are not really my thing but Shane Maloney’s Murray Whelan novels show recent Melbourne history to great effect.  They show how doing the research helps to create a sense of place that is utterly convincing, which is essential for this genre if the rest of the usually improbable tale is to be convincing.  There’s no substitute for doing the research work that’s needed if a book has an historical setting!