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My uncle Ewart worked for the United Nations in Rome, New Delhi, and Ankara. He commented that ethnic restaurants reflect the country they’re in more than the country they’re of. A Turkish restaurant in Canada is primarily Canadian and only secondarily Turkish.
Historical novels set in the Middle Ages got me thinking how Uncle Ewart’s observation applies to fiction. Such novels say more about the culture in which they're written than the culture they depict. For example:
11 Comments
Lisa
6/12/2017 09:31:36 am
Applies to NON-fiction too. So, I write, "The area was poor," and the rellies might understand that I mean "poor" compared to themselves, today, when I mean "poor" compared to other parts of Sweden THEN, which means WAY poor. Good point. Even when you ARE within the context of the time, you have to let your readers know. All the harder sometimes because readers don't necessarily know the context of the time (e.g. how poor was poor). In fiction we have to inform the reader without the reader feeling lectured. As you imply, it can get complicated.
Lisa
6/12/2017 09:45:47 am
Sometimes I blame our difficulty on the universally poor (as in lousy) history education which our readers, as well as ourselves, received. But even history majors aren't well educated on ALL history. I suspect medieval Scandinavia was some different from medieval mideast. 6/12/2017 02:00:04 pm
In European countries, the food specialities can be vastly different as one travels from one region to another region. Benevolent rulers who were less oppressive resulted in the peasantry being healthier, taller, showing modest gains in increased longevity. Digging wells for water was far healthier than taking buckets of water from polluted creeks and streams. In Northwestern WV and in Southwestern PA we can enjoy the pleasures of munching on pepperoni rolls!. These seemingly can be found nowhere else.
Lisa
6/13/2017 09:14:01 am
Hmmmm. I like this. Are we trying too hard, Sarah? :) You who do family history are at a disadvantage. You are doing nonfiction and conveying the ancestors' real lives, so far as possible, is what you're trying to do. In fiction, when I chase after obscure details (what fruits would be fresh in Rhodes in which season?), I'm trying to minimize errors that readers who know Rhodes well would catch, but hey, it's mostly self-indulgence. I really love chasing down obscure details and trying to see how they fit with the plot. It's a form of working puzzles. Readers won't care. You are right, Walter, we read for the entertainment value more than historical accuracy. Some study once found historical learning or detail ranked third among the factors readers value most in a historical novel, the first two (I forget in which order) being engaging characters and engaging plot. In keeping with your food point, when I lunch at a Thai restaurant in Madison, it's to enjoy the food and the company and have something a little different from what I'd eat at home. It's not at all a problem that the restaurant may be a little more like other restaurants in the USA than those in Thailand. In fact, it probably makes the enjoyment more accessible to me that the tableware, service, etc. are pretty much what I,m used to.
Lisa
6/13/2017 12:48:28 pm
I like the word "accessible." 6/14/2017 06:11:51 pm
I seldom join in with writing comments and then reading other person's comments. But it is indeed interesting. During the Nam Conflict I was stationed in Taiwan which had a mixture of 10% Chinese and 90% Taiwanese. This tour of duty was some 13 months. When my wife and I would eat in a restaurant, we would order from a menu which had Arabic numerals on the left to indicate the number you were ordering. All other good stuff to the right was in Chinese writing! We never knew what we were ordering, even though we knew a limited amount of spoken Mandarin. All selections came with steaming hot rice, some veggies and some unknown meat. The meat could have been water buffalo, feline or canine, or even monkey meat. We had no ketchup or mustard, only soy sauce. Westerners were given western silverware while the locals at surrounding tables struggled with chopsticks. We really enjoyed getting outside of a city and trying our luck with in remote towns and villages where few folks with round eyes and high bridged noses would dare not eat. Again, in the remoteness, all food was streaming HOT, with veggies and some type of unknown meat. Some things, indeed, were unknown entities, but wife and I thoroughly enjoyed the ambience, being away from Westerners who continually monitored their watches, chewed gum, and the guys wore baseball caps! Because wife and I took it upon ourselves to learn some spoken Mandarin, the locals bent over backwards to accommodate us. Wife and I enjoyed the eating, the locals enjoyed preparing and serving us their food! Walter, I love your description of eating out in Taiwan! What an experience. Like you, my husband and I - when he was stationed in Ethiopia in 1968-69 - learned a little of the local language, at least enough to barter in the marketplace. The protagonist in my novel finds she's treated differently as she learns some Greek, something few of her fellow expats bother to do. Your experience confirms I got that right, even though my story is set in 1480 and not the 1960s or 1970s. Leave a Reply. |
AuthorI'm a historian who writes novels and literary nonfiction. My home base is Madison, Wisconsin. Archives
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