To quote Buddy the Elf, “I’m in love, I’m in love, and I don’t care who knows it!”
A few nights ago I was browsing for a new book to read after just finishing a lengthy novel. I don’t sleep very well, so it’s common for me to finish a book during the night and look for a new one to start right away. I like to read a variety of types of books by a diverse array of authors. I enjoy biographies and political thrillers; I’ll read anything and everything Brad Thor writes down on paper. I also enjoy the classics and have recently made my way through offerings by Leo Tolstoy, William Faulkner, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, and a bit of Henry James. Right now I’m reading Hemingway. But before you label me a literary snob, you should know I’ve also read all the Outlander books twice. Come to think of it, I might start them for a third time. I do love me some Jamie Fraser. Looking at the variety of books on my shelves got me thinking about why I gravitate toward certain types of stories and it occurred to me that I do have a favorite genre, both to read and to write. I am completely in love with historic fiction.
I have a new book coming out in April called The Willard. It’s a combination of historic fiction with a bit of science fiction mixed in by way of time travel. I’ve always thought that if I could have any superpower I’d have to pass on the ability to fly and choose the ability to travel through time. I had an epiphany thinking about that because it finally dawned on me why that is. It’s because I’m hopelessly in love with the past. I mean teenage girl, mooning over his every word, for the love of Pete will he ever call, smackdown, take your hands off my man, LOVE. And I’m a shameless hussy when it comes to time periods; I’m not faithful to any one of them.
I adore the idea of Paris in the 1920s or even earlier during the Belle Epoch. I want to travel to England in the middle ages and be a courtier during the height of royal intrigue (while keeping my head away from the chopping block, of course). I can picture myself in Charleston during the bombardment of Fort Sumter, and in Philadelphia when a nation was being born. I’d like to visit St. Petersburg before the revolution in 1917 and to be able to see the Allied boats approaching the Normandy coast. I’d like to talk to famous historical figures when they were just regular people trying to accomplish something with no idea whether or not they would be successful. I’d sit and listen to Abraham Lincoln tell a story; they say he was a witty conversationalist and not always the sad figure in the photographs. I might even get to walk the moors with Emily Bronte and her Heathcliff. I would study the old south and the industrial north, the wild west and the towns that popped up along the wagon train pathways across the country. I would wear homespun and silk and grow vegetables and drive a Model T and drink gin in a speakeasy. Men would wear hats and stand when a lady enters the room and bow and say things like “I beg your leave, madam.” Women would wear hats and pretend to be fragile and say things like “it would be my honor, kind sir.” I would go to Scotland before the Jacobite rebellion. (Again I say, hello Jamie Fraser.) I would be continental and cosmopolitan and also humble and a homebody. I could be all those things if I could travel through time. And I am all those things because I do travel through time to distant lands when I read historic fiction.
I am a modern woman, a product of Generation X. I have always had the vote, never been asked to wear a corset, and always enjoyed the very civilized benefits of air conditioning and adequate public sanitation. Though I know there are terrible things to be found in those previous time periods, things that I cannot fully appreciate for having been born when they were no longer a concern, I still yearn to visit and to make myself at home for a while. From the safety of my 21st century existence I am free to pick and choose the most romantic parts of these eras and to place myself in exactly the position I desire in my imagination. I can also run back to my reality if the danger gets too real or the burden too heavy. Despite all that, it is a journey worth taking for me and I leave you now to resume my travels for another night.
Back to Paris I go, in my fringed flapper dress, wearing elbow-length gloves and smoking a cigarette in a long, black holder. The scene is lively with music in the air and people spilling out of clubs onto the sidewalks. The streets are wet and shiny from the earlier rain . . .
Caroline Hasty says
Is yearning for the “good ‘ole days” a desire to leave today’s world? I do not believe so. In fact to me it is the foundation of where we have come from and the continual drive to out-do the next generation. I don’t think that today we have a genre. Are we a mixed bag of every generation before us? Even the ’70’s we could find our classification I was middle class with the same things as everyone else. In the 80’s I celebrated the ripped jeans and the innocent air of sexual innocence. The 90’s seemed to begin the blend classes. If you wanted an expensive car, you could lease where you appeared as the reach yet lived as the poor; also you could find a home in your price range in the middle of the slums or country club estates because society wants everyone to be equal. If I go back in time I think I could find my place, today I still struggle trying to find the middle of the classes.
LeAnne says
You’re right, Caroline. We are a mixed bag for sure!