Sarah Gibbard Cook
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Fire, Flood, and Famine

3/21/2016

5 Comments

 
My students used to joke that I was happiest in times of plague, heresy, rebellion, fire, flood, and famine. It’s true, at least in the context of Tudor-Stuart England (the subject of that seminar). I love narrative history; without struggle there’s no narrative. The drama delights me—if it took place four hundred years ago.

What I want to read or write about isn’t what I want to live. Give me a quiet day where excitement is the throaty call of a sandhill crane. Give me adventures where the stakes are low. Give me fiction where I can identify with the protagonist in danger, then close the book and go safely to bed.
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Writing recent history put these impulses on a collision course. Dozens of polio vaccination workers in Pakistan were killed in targeted attacks since July 2012. This was dramatic to write about, but too horrific to bring delight. Recent events haven’t yet lost their reality and faded into a story. And unlike most novels, there is no assurance of a satisfying ending.
5 Comments
Jeri link
3/21/2016 02:58:59 pm

Always great to read what you are thinking only better if I can hear you.

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Sarah link
3/21/2016 03:20:19 pm

Thanks, Jeri. Stimulating live conversations are the best but every form is good.

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Mary Helen
3/26/2016 08:47:40 am

Love the line about living an adventure of danger and the closing the book. The escapism of reading, priceless.

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Sarah link
3/26/2016 04:40:07 pm

Escape from the daring adventure of real life into adventures of fictional dangers, and then back out again.

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Sarah link
4/23/2016 07:18:25 am

Two days ago brought news of seven police officers in Pakistan killed in drive-by shootings while protecting health workers, many of whom are young women. What would make for a good read in a novel is distressing to read in the news.

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    I'm a historian who writes novels and literary nonfiction. My home base is Madison, Wisconsin. 

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