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Plagues, Witches, and War: The Worlds of Historical Fiction
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Seminar with Geraldine Brooks
In this module author Geraldine Brooks interacts with the seminar class students of Professor Holsinger’s Historical Fiction class to discuss her book “Year of Wonders.”
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Bruce HolsingerProfessor
English
I have a question.
I think you just have such a unique perspective
as an author with your background as a writer.
And your, and your writing spirit in the Middle East.
And it's been so interesting to hearing you talk about.
I'm not.
I'm by no means comparing the Middle East to conditions in 1666.
But like, I've noticed you made some parallels,
and I was just wondering if you know,
do you have any like, readership there? >> Do I have what?
>> Like, is there is there like.
>> I just didn't hear the last, the last thing you said.
And like a group of readership there? Because this is, like.
>> Do you have a readership in the Middle East or in North Africa or in?
>>
you know of all the languages that my works been translated into, Arabic
is not one of them, unfortunately. And, but that's not, I don't take it
personally because sadly at the moment very little is being
translated into Arabic, you know the Arab speaking
world is in a kind of a publishing slump and it has been the case ever since the
civil war in Beruit in the 1980s. That used
to be the center of translation and publishing for the Arab
world and, it really hasn't come back and it's just a shame.
But, on the other hand what I did learn in the Middle East was that the
younger generation are amazingly avid intellectually and incredibly
gifted linguists and most of the, you know middle class and
above kids speak three or four languages fluently and they read widely in English.
So I may have more of a readership than I know about.
But but there haven't been translations.
>> I have a question about Anna.
I think it's interesting that you talk about the
way you wanted to give her this great ending.
And, I wonder to what extent you see Anna as a idealized or metaphorical,
or like, symbolic character, as opposed to
a rounded or flawed, or three dimensional character.
>> Yeah,
you know, I think, I, I really liked her. I probably liked her more than I should.
You know?
And now because this was my first novel and I've learned now that it's probably
not a good idea to befriend your
characters to the extent that I befriended her.
You know, she, she's jealous, and she has a
few flaws, but she doesn't have a whole lot
of flaws, and, you know, probably, as a novelist, that's a slight weakness.
You know, that I love her.
I think somebody said he loves his characters more than God loves them.
[LAUGH]
Probably a, probably a not a good place to be, you know, probably I should
have given her a bit more gritty side. But, I do, I really miss her.
Of all my characters, I miss her the most.
[LAUGH]
>> That sounds like a sequel
[LAUGH]
>> Well, I don't have to write it cause I have,
I know it in my head, I know what happens to her.
You know, she actually,
[INAUDIBLE]
dies and she marries his oldest son and that is the true marriage.
So she does have physical passion in her life.
And again, and, and she dies in an earthquake that strikes around
30 years later from the time that we leave her there.
[LAUGH]
[INAUDIBLE]
Anna's Conclusion.
Initially, I didn't, I didn't quite understand
how she would end up where she did.
I thought the ending was very unique.
But I feel though, that Anna could not have ended up where
she did, unless she'd gone through the transformation she did in the book.
Was it, did you feel that it was necessary for her to have to lose her faith
in one God or in one life that she knew to take on this other life that is,
what some would argue is the complete antithesis of Christianity
and what you have talked about in this, this book.
How, how did you prepare Anna for this transformation that you create for her?
>> I don't think, I don't think of it that way.
I don't think it's an antithesis at all as a continuum
of Christianity, if you like, or Christ-like behavior on her part.
Because what she doing, she's doing the work of the gospel,
she's healing the sick.
You know, clothing the naked, hearing the unheard.
You know, that is a continuum in her life.
She doesn't embrace, Islam but I thought, thought, thought that it
was, fun to be able to point out that because she is
interested in the healing arts, the healing arts at that time are
much more advanced in the Islamic world than they were in Europe.
And that's just, that was true. So that was.
Interesting to work with and I've already had
her, you know, with all the sinners' textbook.
And it didn't occur - I didn't, you know, it didn't occur to me that, you know, that
would be even sinner once she gets to to Iran.
But then it, it's, it's fun to play with that, you
know, the, the fact that if you're going to become a doctor
you're better off in the Islamic world at that point, then you are in, in England.
I
think that you know, the, the crisis that she goes through about her belief system
is at the same time as she's Uncertain about that
set of beliefs, she's more certain about what her role in the world
needs to be and her life is so entirely unselfish,
that you know, it's you don't have to, you don't have to have a doctrine, I guess,
to be a good person.
and if anything, you know, that would be the message.
>>
going back to I guess like, Anna's character itself, I
did kind of notice that she was like super perfect
at some times, but then the times when she did
have like a lapse in like, human perfection, I thought were.
Really poignant, like, when he, she took like the poppy seeds.
And then, also when she was int, extremely, that moment
when she was extremely jealous of Eleanor, but also of Michael.
And I wanted
to point out that passage which is on 229 in our books.
And it's the really last paragraph of the
[UNKNOWN].
I was jealous of both of them at once.
Of him because Eleanor loved him and I hungered for a greater share of her
love than I could ever hope for, and yet I was jealous of her too.
Jealous that she was loved by a man as a woman is meant to be loved.
Why should I writhe on my cold and empty
bed while she took comfort in his warm flesh?
I kept away from the door trying to still my shaking
hand so that the rattling tray would not give me away.
I entered the kitchen, walked to the washroom.
There I sat down the tray.
From it, I lifted the delicate dishes, his first, then
hers and smashed them, one by one, against the unyielding stone.
And I kind of just was wondering like, what, or
in your mind, how you have lead to that scene.
Because like, there, I definitely found that Anna and Elenor
had a really close relationship, and you know, one which
maybe, someone she admired.
Or like a mentor to her, like a close sister.
But then I never really thought that it would lead
to like, this extreme jealousy, in like, in this way.
So I was just wondering how, like, you
envisioned their relationship, and maybe Anna's side of it?
>> I think that, you know, there's a couple of things
going on there, one is, you know, I think jealousy is
something that, you know, I've struggled with in my
younger life, a kind of almost like a black
cloud that comes down when, you know, you love
somebody and you think that their affections are elsewhere.
And she's not that self-aware about who it is she really loves.
You know, she, she think she loves Eleanor, but really she loves Michael too.
And, there's that dawning awareness, but it's also her
misunderstanding of what's between Eleanor and Michael at that moment.
So what it's, it's trying to get at, how much can you know about another marriage.
Even if, you know, both the people though intimately what's
between a married couple, it's really inscrutable to an outsider.
And I think all of the, all of us who've had friends who we thought were really
happy and suddenly they have a divorce and
you don't know why and you'll never know why.
Why because there's in something in that,
you know, intimate bond that outsiders can't penetrate.
So I was trying to get at that too, that she thinks
it's so perfect and then later we'll find out not so much.
>> And she's also been so deprived of touch and
contact and intimacy in, in so many different ways you
know, from, from before the beginning of the novel even.
That it, that it makes it all the starker I think what, what happens.
>> Yeah.
And, you know, she's still, she's 18 years old.
[LAUGH]
>> Say no more.
[LAUGH]
>> I had a broader question about agency in the novel.
And There's one moment in particular on page 115, it's just
a, it's a brief little, little line it's in the Wide Green
Prison and it says, and so the rest of us set about
learning to live in the Wide Green Prison of our own election.
And when I read that I thought, oh Gosh, that's so
funny, not funny but it's strange to think of the plague
over which they have no control, I mean it's
spreading like you said, they have no germ theory.
They have no idea why it spreads, where it does and to whom it does, and, and so I
was really interested in the, the choice of confinement and
the way that gave some sort of power but also it was a very confused choice and so.
I don't know, I, I was just, I was really interested in the action
that characters are able to take in the novel.
and sort of the outcomes of that.
So, how did you, sort of, conceive of the idea of agency, in the face of
something that's so, sort of, amorphous and hard
to grab onto, as the pil, as the plague.
But, very powerful at the same time.
>> Well I just trying to think of what could you, what could have
been, you know, the gamet of reactions to this, why would people have agreed to
this quarantine and I thought, well, some of them for reasons
of faith, they really believed that was the right thing to do
and others surely because they were afraid of what would happen, because
it was not easy thing to, it's not like now, you know?
You leave Waterford you go to Leesburg.
In those days if you didn't belong to a place, you know,
you could be run out of town.
They weren't crazy about strangers and particularly, once
it, word got that he might be carrying disease
so you really did run the risk of being outcast and with no one to help you.
So, a lot of people, I'm sure, stayed out of
fear and I wanted to show all those different motivations
that people might have had and that's why there's,
you know, the consequence for the people who decide to
leave and, you know, they get attacked in the
next village and and it doesn't end well for them.
So, you know, it was important to point out the reality that this wasn't all just
I self sacrifice, in some cases it was
just self preservation that you were better off
with the people whom you knew then you would be among strangers.
>>
it's been really interesting hearing you talk about the role
that children play in your novel because I became very curious
and aware of the role they play particularly between Anna
and her father and even in Eleanor's case, and especially in
[UNKNOWN]
that the child almost acts as the deciding factor
for the fate of their parents. like the passage that particularly
struck me was on, on page 202 in my edition in your
chapter on the body of the mind, when her father's being convicted in court
and he's realizing that she's not going to help
him, he says but as I gazed back at him
in silence, the look changed to one of surprise, and
then confusion, and finally as the realization that I would
not speak came at last upon him, his whole face sagged.
There was rage there, but not but also
dissapointment, and the slow dawning of a sad understanding.
I had to look away then, for the hint of his grief was more than I could bear.
that there's
so much misunderstanding and almost madness and
rage between child-parent relations in your book.
I was just wondering if you could enlighten us on that.
>> I just, I guess I wanted the abused child to
have a little pay back there and when I'm writing that, I'm thinking about the
scene earlier where he completely humiliates her and terrifies
her and I just really, you know. He, he's
pushed her over the edge where she cannot extend any more compassion
to him. He's done, you know.
And I just wanted to try and convey what that might be like and it has costs to the
one who withholds compassion as well as to the one from whom it is withheld.
That he had it coming.
[LAUGH]
>> Well we maybe have time for, for one
more question, anyone else want to bring up something that.
>> I, I've got a question, I guess,
[CROSSTALK]
okay.
I think one of the things that we talked about in lecture was when you're
reading this book, there's so many words that you kind of that we're not familiar
with and are hard for us to might be a word I have never heard
of before, like croft, I remember I had to Google it while I was reading.
is that something you intentionally place in your
novel in order to, you know, sort of.
I don't know, encourage us to do further
research or what was your intent in creating this world and
sort of making almost, not alienating, but so different from our own.
>> So, it's very important to me to try and get the language right.
Or if not exactly right.
Because really, she probably would have spoken in an archaic Derbyshire dialect.
But if I would have written the book in
archaic Derbyshire dialect nobody would have bothered to read it.
So, it's a case of trying
to get close to a sense of authenticity, if not the authentic itself.
And I guess I, I would go back to
something that a novelist called Jim Craigs told me once.
He was telling me about researching his
novel Quarantine, which is set in biblical Israel,
and to do the research he went camping in the Judaean desert with a Bedouin guide.
And the first morning they
wake up and his guide brings him a cup of Cardamom scented coffee, Arabic coffee and
says Mr. Jim how did you sleep. And Jim says Ahmed I slept like a log.
Then he said he raised his eyes to the Judean hillside, no logs, no trees.
[LAUGH]
So he turns to his guide and says Ahmed, how did you sleep?
And Ahmed says, Mr. Jim, I slept like a dead donkey.
[LAUGH]
And so to me, it's the case of, you've gotta get
all the logs in the book and turn them into dead donkeys
[LAUGH]
So, I, I take a lot of time in, you know,
in word choice, I don't want to, I don't want to
impose a burden on the reader so I hope you can
always figure out from the context, what the unusual vocabulary is.
But, it's very important in Caleb's Crossing there's
an example that I give as the same thing
like, I want my protagonist in that book, at one point, to talk about a fetus but
I'm pretty sure that in 1655
Massachusetts, she's not using the word fetus.
So you can research this.
There's actually a wonderful volume called the Oxford
Historical Thesaurus of the English Language, and digs
down through vocabulary to every word that's been
used For a thing, right down to early Icelandic.
So you can go look up fetus and
dig down to mid 17th century and find that the
word that she would have used for fetus is shapeling.
When you put the word shapeling in her mouth, you're time traveling and I mean
it's It gives you a, an insight into how people think, if you get the right word.
So I hope you find a lot of dead donkeys in the book.
[LAUGH]
>> Well, this has been a really extraordinary
hour, so and thank, thank you so much.
We can't thank you enough for joining our
class and joining our larger class as well.
So thank you, Geraldine Brooks. >> Wonderful to be with you.
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