Fiction and History

Category: From the novelists and fiction writers

  • What the couch next to the writer’s desk ought to look like

    Partial bibliography The Battle of Carthage: Border War in Southwest Missouri, July 5, 1861 Borderland Rebellion: A History of the Civil War on the Missouri-Arkansas Border Civil War St. Louis The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens A Concise History of Bulgaria Conversations with E. L. Doctorow Crossroads at the Spring: A Pictorial History of Springfield,…

  • What would E. L. Doctorow do?

    In the book Conversations with E. L. Doctorow edited by Christopher D. Morris, E. L. Doctorow is asked again and again about history, accuracy, and historical fiction, especially in regard to one of my favorite novels Ragtime. Doctorow believes fiction is its own system of knowledge, and adds “there is really no fiction or nonfiction;…

  • Fiction and history

    This is an exploration not an answer. Throughout the writing of my novel (1993-2009), Morkan’s Quarry, I had the privilege of assisting a lot of historians of the south and of the Ozarks. When, through their own sleuthing or their own kindness, they discovered I was writing a novel set in the past, these historians…