Can a novelist also be an historian?  There are plenty of historical novels published every year, and some of them are very popular.  Some of them may even be quite accurate in representing the events, the culture, lifestyle, technology, and even the key personalities of the subject time frame.

I very much enjoyed reading the Sharpe series of novels by Bernard Cornwell.  Richard Sharpe was a fictional soldier, then an officer, in the British Army from about 1790 to 1810.  The novels follow his progress from raw recruit (his mother was a woman of easy virtue in East London) until he is a lieutenant colonel at the  Battle of Waterloo.  He overcomes many obstacles (military, romantic and social) on and off the battlefields in India, Portugal, Spain, France and Belgium.  I didn’t read the novels as history, although the descriptions of the battles are said to be very accurate, and that Cornwell carefully researched his material.  What I enjoyed about the novels were Sharpe’s talent for surviving  in difficult situations and Cornwell’s array of good and bad characters.

I also enjoyed the Aubrey-Maturin series of novels by Patrick O’Brien.  Captain Jack Aubrey had command of a Royal Navy ship during the Napoleonic Wars, and Stephen Maturin was the ship’s surgeon and Aubrey’s good friend.  The 2003 film Master and Commander: the Far Side of the  World  with Russell Crowe as Captain Aubrey drew material from several of O’Brien’s novels.  Most of these novels reached the New York Times best seller list, and were acclaimed internationally.  Again, I didn’t read these novels for their historic content; I enjoyed reading how Aubrey and Maturin would triumph in the face of adversity.  My impression is that the descriptions of life aboard Royal Navy ships in 1800 is quite accurate as far as it goes.  Winston Churchill once described shipboard life at the time as “rum, sodomy and the lash”.  There was undoubtedly more to it than that brief, brutal summary.  O’Brien does mention the daily (and coveted) ration of grog (rum) issued to the crew, and there are several passages dealing with floggings (which neither Aubrey nor O’Brien, apparently, liked.)  But sodomy is never mentioned, and it must have been prevalent among all male crews from poor, illiterate backgrounds who were cooped up on board ship for years at a time.  In fact, the scene which O’Brien paints is of a very hard but somewhat romantic life.  That’s fair enough; would we be anxious to read about the true brutality of the life?  For example, falls from the rigging were quite common on sailing men of war.  The consequences of such falls were usually severe if the sailor landed on the deck below, and almost always fatal if he fell into the water: rescuing a man overboard was not the norm.

As an author, I have occasionally inserted historic material into my novels.  For example, there are LaMarr’s tours of Vietnam and Somalia as an enlisted man and an officer in Sin & Contrition.  But these passages are not intended to be read as history, but rather as the setting for events in the life of a character.

On the Institute of Historical Research website there is this commentary:

“The relationship between academic history and historical fiction is a subject of great interest to historians. Major academic conferences . . . have included papers and sessions on the subject, and they are proving among the most lively and well attended. There are numerous examples of historians who have successfully moved into the sphere of fiction, and conversely of authors whose fiction is underpinned by rigorous research. The large and growing public interest in history in Britain takes in both historical fact and historical fiction. And it is clear that many historians were at least in part inspired to pursue historical research by novels that they had read, or indeed are currently either planning to write or are writing their own works of fiction.”

It goes on to raise the following questions:

• “Why have historical novels become ‘respectable’, and why anecdotally are historians being encouraged to write them?
• What is the difference between historical fiction and academic history, and how rigid are the boundaries between the two?
• How good are readers at differentiating between ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’ and how much does it matter if they don’t?
• Does the success of historical fiction benefit or threaten academic history, and what can literary authors and academics learn from each other?”

Perhaps I am a purist, but I believe it is very important to distinguish fact from fiction.  Some of the most egregious examples of fiction parading as fact are the history text books for children in communist states.  These text books of ‘history’ inflate the government’s successes, and, if they deal with failings of the state at all, the picture is rosy and sugar-coated.  How are we (and, more particularly our children) to learn right from wrong if we are intentionally told lies with a smiling face?

Should a novelist also be a philosopher?  Just to be clear about the point, Wikipedia defines philosophy as “the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind and language.”  It goes on to say that ‘philosophy’ is derived from a Greek word meaning ‘love of knowledge’.  Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle were among the first Western philosophers.  More recent  philosophers have included Sarte, Camus and Malraux, and all three were also novelists.   Most living philosophers today teach at large universities, and I can think of no one who is both a well-known author and a prominent philosopher.  Interestingly, Ernest Hemingway wrote a number of novels and short stories in which deeply philosophical issues are addressed, but Hemingway certainly would not have considered himself a philosopher.  Rather, he was a writer who had tremendous skill in presenting the fundamental issues surrounding what it is to be human.

Clearly, most novels which are published today have little, if any philosophical content.  This is largely true of  romances, detective stories, science fiction, spy stories, thrillers, and books for children and teen-agers.  Biographical fiction, war stories, political fiction, and historical novels may only touch on philosophical issues.  Does it matter?

I think we have to  ask ourselves why there appears to be a convergence of these two trends.  One of these trends is the absence of a modern philosopher of stature – a man or woman who regularlycaptures the  interest and attention of educated people.  The second trend is the apparent reluctance of philosophers to venture outside the university or outside the professional society meeting to write interesting novels with real philosophical content.  Neither trend, it seems to me, is caused be a shortage of professional philosophers.  While the American Philosophical Association does not publish information on the number of its members, I have the impression that there are at least 25,000 members.   Has the ‘market’ for philosophical discussion dried up (except among college students who are pursuing a liberal education)?  This, I think, may be the answer, and the key word is ‘discussion’.  It has become unfashionable (except, again, among college students) to discuss the key philosophical questions, such as:

• what is the nature of man in the universe?
• in the context of the universe and eternity, why is man’s existence so short and his power so small?
• ultimately, what is the purpose of man’s existence?
• what is the nature of faith?  of reason?
• what is the nature of the relationship between man and God (if He exists)?
• what is the relationship between good and evil?
• what is more important: knowing or doing?

Various commentators have suggested that our culture of mass understanding of technological, social and psychological issues has insulated us from the assault of these questions.  We are deluged with information of all kinds by the media, much of the information is presented as ‘true’ or as ‘most people believe that . . .”  Our values have become propped up by commonly held assumptions which define our comfort zones.  We have become reluctant to consider, thoughtfully, questions like these because we are afraid of losing our comfortable props, and having to confront what may seem like (and which may in fact be) a terrifying void.

Art, it seems to me, is somewhat ahead of literature is dealing with philosophical issues.  On 3 May 2012, Edvard Munch’s pastel The Scream was sold by Sothebys for just under $120 million to a private buyer.

This pastel cries out with philosophical significance.  It expresses man’s anxiety about his existence in the universe.  The artist said this about the inspiration to do the work: “I was walking along a path with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city.  My friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.”  In fact, much of modern art represents a commentary on philosophical issues, representing in various ways, the broken world, lost or shattered man, curious values, jumbled communications, and so on.

While the artist may be very good at raising philosophical questions (as The Scream does); it is much more difficult for the artist to provide answers to these questions (as Sarte, Camus and Malraux did in the existential philosophies they presented in their writings).  It is relatively easy for the writer to ask (or to raise) philosophical questions in a novel, as Dickens did and as John Irving does currently.

Of course, it is difficult to paint or to sculpt – to depict – the answer to a philosophical question.  And to an extent, it is difficult to a writer to present his or her answers to philosophical questions in a novel.  The difficulty for the artist is how to communicate, visually, an answer to an abstract question: the viewer may be moved in some way by the depiction, but he may have difficulty understanding.  The problem for the writer is different.  He can set forth his answer quite clearly.  But having the reader take an interest in the answer depends on whether the reader feels any real urgency about the question.  Or is s/he oblivious to the question and insulated from it?

The fact that a simple, but colourful and expressive, pastel commanded a price of $120 million suggests to me that, on at least a subconscious level, people are attuned to philosophical questions.  The challenge is to use one’s artistic skill to raise philosophical issues to the conscious level, and to do so in a way that the reader (or viewer) is intellectually and emotionally captivated.