Hard on the heels of yesterday's rant over facts-that-ain't, we have this Jeff Danziger pot shot at poor old Bill O'Reilly's book -- described by its publisher as "A riveting historical narrative of the heart-stopping events surrounding the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and the first work of history from mega-bestselling author Bill O'Reilly" -- which is apparently incompetent enough that it isn't being officially sold at Ford's Theater (where Lincoln had suffered enough already) but not such a disaster that the publisher has recalled it entirely.
Poor old Bill, of course, was already known for sloppy scholarship, given that he wasn't clear on the difference between falafel and a loofah. Or the difference between working with a woman and dating her. Or between working with her and dating her and creeping her out entirely.
I have some sympathy for him, because I'm in the midst of writing a piece of historical fiction set in the War of 1812. I've done this kind of writing for kids before, with stories set during Prohibition or among homeless youth in the streets of New York in the late 19th century, but there is a difference between a story set in a certain era and one that centers on specific events, and this one focuses on the second Battle of Sackett's Harbor.
In both cases, research is required, of course. But learning the overall elements of a time and place is different than working with specific events. I had to re-set my narrative a couple of times because I'd go back to check a fact and discover, for instance, that Major Benjamin Forsyth retreated from Ogdensburg to Sackett's Harbor, NY, via a more direct, northern route, across the top of Black Lake, rather than on what was likely the better road, the southern route through what is now Heuvelton. (The difference in the dead of winter being, I suppose, somewhat moot in terms of road surface and the northern route being considerably shorter.)
I knew that Ogdensburg was Ogdensburgh, Sackett's Harbor was Sacket's Harbor and Heuvelton was Fordsburgh. But, given that the first two chapters of the story were set in Fordsburgh, arranging a meeting there between my young protagonist and Major Forsyth became somewhat problematic.
And then, once I got him to Sackett's Harbor, the comings and goings of various people became increasingly important. You couldn't have your requisite plucky lad in the same room as Zebulon Pike if Pike were, for instance, already dead. But you also had to make sure Pike wasn't still alive but back in Plattsburgh at the time.
What makes it more difficult for me, and yet easier, is that, unlike Bill, I don't have Martin Dugard co-writing with me. It's more difficult because I actually have to do all the work myself, but easier in that it's almost always more efficient to simply do it yourself than to wonder if your collaborator is screwing things up.
Well, one of them was, and I suspect that one of these fellows is unhappy with the other about now, and I also suspect that a person who blows off people in interviews without really listening to what they are saying does the same thing in other settings, but, in any case, the bottom line is that, when you get your name several times larger on the cover, your responsibility for what is between the covers is also several times larger.
In my case, I'm fortunate to be working at a level where screwing it up is not an option, because, if someone writes to a newspaper pointing out that I've got Benjamin Forsyth in a place he clearly wasn't, nobody is going to suggest that the critic is simply a political enemy.
They would most likely think, instead, that I had screwed up and, perhaps, that I was sloppy and a bit of a jackass.
I say "fortunately" because I wouldn't want to screw up anyway, and so having no built-in margin for error keeps me honest.
O'Reilly, poor fellow, has reached a point in his career where he is free to screw up as much as he likes and can dismiss his critics as the sort of partisan liberal elitist socialist pinheads who believe that the Oval Office didn't exist until 1909, or that it wasn't John Wilkes Booth who cut the peephole in that door at Ford's Theater.
He's in a position where sloppy scholarship and off-the-cuff history are simply minor, irrelevant elements in his lifelong campaign to set America straight.
Meanwhile, for my part, if I published something so riddled with errors, I'd falafel.
I kind of figured the book wasn't to historical when O'Reilly wrote that "The nation had just finished fighting it's Civil War on Christmas."
Posted by: Richard J. Marcej | 11/17/2011 at 10:15 AM
Why would Bill have an interest in facts? They have a well-known liberal bias.
Posted by: Mark Jackson | 11/17/2011 at 08:46 PM