The “Unreview” : Anachronisms in Historical Fiction

As those of you who follow this blog know, I sometimes include book reviews here. Recently, a writer asked me if I would review a piece of historical fiction, a novel set in ancient times. I was pleased at the request and agreed. However, for reasons that will become clear, I decided against a standard assessment of the book.

That’s because major problems in the treatment kept jerking me out of the narrative flow. The reasons why are instructive. But I do not plan to identify either the author or the book title. I will also do my best to mask the exact nature of the story itself. The problems I encountered illustrate, I’m afraid, why many historians don’t much like historical fiction.

The sample copy arrived in the mail and I immediately read the back-cover blurb. (I hasten to note that the cover art was very well done.) A glance at the first page or so heightened my excitement. Novels set in Classical Greek or Roman times are rather unusual. The story I was to review was set over a time period that spanned the later years of the Seleucid Empire.

To refresh your memory, the Seleucid Empire ruled a large part of the Middle East after the breakup of Alexander the Great’s empire. Antiochus the Great ascended to the Seleucid throne in 223 BC. He expanded and stabilized the empire, but also suffered a painful defeat against the Roman Republic in 188. After his death the following year, the empire declined. Thus, around 140 BC, the Jewish Maccabees wrested a semi-independent kingdom from the Seleucids.

The novel is written as the memoirs of three men, linked by family, whose lives overlap during this period. Each serves with the Roman Army. I began reading with much anticipation. However, after not too many pages, I began to lose the flow. I’d have a spurt of interest, and then feel like I’d been thrown off track.

I had been reading as a reader, but now I backed off a bit and began to read analytically. At first, I thought the problem arose from some distracting matters of writing “craft” – not directly relevant to the subject of this blog. But then came (cliché alert) “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” The narrator says that another character “needed to vent” about something terrible that had happened. This phrase, used in the sense of an emotional catharsis, is a rather modern Americanism. In fact, “vent” with a meaning of “express freely” did not appear in the language until around 1590 AD.

An “anachronism” is something considered “out of its time.” Some are blatant: A character using an automatic pistol during the American Civil War. (Automatic pistols – like the famous Colt .45 automatic – were not invented until the 1890s.) Others are harder to spot: A character checking his wristwatch while he waited for the Admiral Horatio Nelson funeral procession to start. (Lord Nelson was killed at Trafalgar in 1805; the first wristwatch appeared in 1868. Knowledgeable readers would consider this a blatant anachronism, but I suspect others might miss it.)

Of course, “the master,” William Shakespeare, is often accused of anachronisms in his plays – and rightly so. However, back then, very little study had been devoted to “what life was like” in those earlier times. Even classically-educated Elizabethans learned few details of daily life in ancient times. The lower classes knew nothing at all. So playwrights selectively used upper-class artifacts shown in historic statuary and frescoes, or contemporary props that would at least be familiar to their audience. Moreover, as just one example, reproducing Roman costumes, weapons, etc. for a stage production of Julius Caesar would have been far too costly.

But perhaps the most difficult anachronisms occur in the use of language … and that turned out to be why I could not really “get into” the story. The narrators of these memoirs are meant to be Romans, living in the period 220-140 BC. Although one endured years of slavery (as a captured soldier), they are from the upper classes of Roman society and are well-educated.

Early on, the story-teller refers to the first “Punic War.” Well … the Romans of the time did not call it that. The epic poem, Punica, was not written until at least 170 years after the Romans destroyed Carthage. The term “Punic” for “pertaining to Carthage” did not come into general usage until around 1530 AD.

No big deal. The reference quickly set the time frame, and I barely noticed the anomaly the first time through. But on the very next page, the narrator’s father remarks that he had “grown like a weed.” Somehow, that did no sound like something a Roman would say, so I checked it out. The first known use of that analogy was in John Heywoods Proverbs, published in 1546 AD. In fact, “weed” has no Latin cognate; it is Old English, from about 1400 AD and based on a Germanic root.

On the next page, the narrator states that he knew he could not “talk back to” his father. That phrase, in the sense of disagree or argue, dates from around 1800 AD, or later. Beyond that, both “talk” and “back” are of Germanic origin.

The use of specific words also began to distract me. “Booty,” as applied to captured wealth, dates from around 1450 and has a Germanic root. (The narrator later speaks of the “spoils” of war, a more appropriate term.) “Intelligence” in the sense of “information obtained from scouts and/or spies” did not come into usage until around 1550 AD. The narrator also says he participated in a “debriefing,” an egregious anachronism since that term did not exist until around 1945.

You may well feel that I’m being too picky. And it’s true that the presence of any one, or even a few of these anachronistic references would not necessarily be a problem. (Although even one would be a “deal breaker” for some readers.) But there are so many, including some that are considered modern clichés. When the reader cannot get through a few pages without encountering another one, the anachronisms become a major distraction.

And it did go on like that. At one point, in a span of three pages, the narrator used “intelligence” (for “information”) again, plus “britches” to describe some barbarian’s trousers. Besides these specific words, he also used the phrases “weak kneed” and “be his own boss.” First of all, “britches” is a Twentieth Century term. (There is a perfectly good Latin word – bracae – for trousers, by the way.) “Weak kneed,” used to show concern or nervousness, did not come into usage until 1850 AD. Moreover, “weak” is from a Germanic root. The “boss” phrase is quite modern. The word itself, from a Dutch (i.e. Germanic) term for “master” (baas), did not appear in English until 1640 AD

I tried to persevere after that, but a few pages later I hit the “needed to vent” usage. After that, I began skipping through the book, jumping ahead pages at a time. I continued to find language anachronisms, some repeats plus many new ones. To bolster this “unreview,” I even made notes about phrases whose origins I could trace. The examples I’ve used in this blog are only a third of those I recorded – and that list came from less than a third of the book. (There were also others that caught my attention, but I could not easily find their sources.)

Right toward the end, the narrator says, “What’s done is done” to denote unhappy circumstances that cannot be changed. This phrase first appeared in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, published around 1605 AD. “Done” itself, as the past participle of “do” is from Old English and is therefore of Germanic origin.

An author must tread a fine line between authenticity and being understandable to his/her audience. And English offers many, many choices in how to say something. Here, the author’s choices just didn’t sound right, coming from those characters. Thus, the narrators never convince me that they are actual Romans, telling their own stories. And without that “willing suspension of disbelief,” I did not much care what happened to them.

In the end, as noted above, I decided not to publish a standard review of this book. Sad. I really wanted to enjoy the book. The story itself is well-conceived, and the characters seem like they could be interesting. The author has clearly done a lot of research about that period of history, and has crammed an amazing amount of it into the text.

Some will surely think I’m being too picky about the anachronistic language, and perhaps they’re right. Without that, I would have probably enjoyed the characters, solid historical research, and a pretty good story. If you think you might be interested in reading the novel, send me a separate e-mail and I’ll identify it for you. (It’s available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.)

Irish in the West : Beyond the American Pale (Book)

“Between 1845 and 1910 approximately five million people left Ireland for the United States. The vast majority of them were Catholic, desperately poor, and without the work skills that could command decent wages.” So begins the Introduction to Beyond the American Pale: The Irish in the West, 1845-1910 by David M. Emmons, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Montana (University of Oklahoma Press, Norman: 2010).

Immigrants aboard ship for departure.
Illustrated London News (1850).*

To put that number in perspective, those emigrants came from a nation whose population peaked at about 8.5 million just before the Great Famine of the 1840s, and averaged only about 5.6 million over the time period in question.

This is a very significant text, and a monumental scholarly achievement … “The product of three decades of research and thought.” The hardback contains 350 pages of description and analysis, and over one hundred pages of supporting material. The font used, smaller than the typical paperback, allowed the publisher to cram huge amounts of information into those pages. (Full disclosure: I received this book as a free review copy.)

This book is important because typical histories of the Irish in American tend to focus on “ethnic enclaves” in the larger cities, mostly on the East coast. As Dr. Emmons says, “Historians have not paid a great deal of attention to the Irish American experience in western America.” He then briefly outlines what he thinks are the reasons for this relative neglect. Beyond the American Pale is meant to fill the resulting gap.

He next gets into the meat of his thesis: These Irish emigrants were “beyond the pale” – not just outside the mainstream of American life, but actively rejected by that society. Back then, job postings often said, “Irish need not apply.” Their Roman Catholicism was the highly-visible issue that called forth such vitriol from overwhelmingly Protestant America. Yet Emmons argues persuasively that the root cause lay in the amalgam of their religion with ancient Celtic folkways.

Building on the work of other experts, Professor Emmons says that the Irish “were premodern leftovers – communal, dependent, fatalistic, passive, traditional – attempting to make their way in a modern industrial society that was individualistic, independent, optimistic, aggressive, and innovative.”

Emmons then spends some time assessing “The West” the Irish were moving into. Actually, he describes a variety of Wests. But his emphasis on “industrial society” was the crucial element. Conventional stories of the West focused on the homesteaders and cowboys (and sheepmen) who provided grain, meat, and other foodstuffs to feed that society.

Miners in Butte Montana, many of the them Irish, ca 1908.
Credit (probably) Butte-Silver Bow Archives.*

Yet western gold, silver, copper, wood products, and so on were equally important, if not more so. Their production required large numbers of men who would do the hard, dangerous work for rock-bottom wages. There simply weren’t enough “modern” – independent, optimistic, aggressive – workers willing to fill the need. Enter the desperately poor, unskilled Irishmen, who had to take any jobs they could get. Still, while the industrial engine needed the Irish, it did not embrace them; they were still “beyond the pale.”

Emmons devotes two chapters to comparing and contrasting the Irish in America to two other groups of outsiders: black slaves and Native Americans. He discusses the variety of reasons, or excuses, that led citizens of the Northern industrialized states to view Irish Catholicism as a threat equal to that of the Southern institution of black slavery. Beyond that, it appears that blind prejudice equated incomprehensible Native American spiritual beliefs to the “superstitious” practices of the Papist emigrants.

Intertwined within that analysis, Emmons describes how emigrating to the United States showed the depth of Irish desperation. To move away from the home turf, he declared “was to be detached from community – and that was the cultural equivalent of falling off the edge of the earth. The Irish word for community was muintir; there is no adequate English translation. Na muintiri were held together by bonds of family, tradition, and shared and intensely local values.”

The fact that the emigrants faced distrust and contempt when they arrived only aggravated the problem. Their answer was entirely predictable: “They set up their parallel universe – their own schools, churches, fraternities, neighborhoods, and rookeries.”

Emmons spends some time studying that phenomenon. He concluded that “the Irish went to where the Irish were.” That is, once some Irishmen had a foothold at a particular place, or in a particular situation, others soon followed. This is a well-supported assessment. However, his discourse sometimes implies that the Irish were unique, or at least unusual in this regard, and that is somewhat problematic. Records show clearly that ties of blood and marriage – for English, as well as various ethnic groups – commonly led to family enclaves all over the West. Yet the Irish versions do seem both more broadly based within the community, and more tightly knit.

The final chapter examines the relationship between these Irish communities and the American labor movement. Being culturally and historically predisposed to resist exploitation, the Irish were often at the forefront of that movement. Yet, in Emmons’ view, militant Irish unionism was never about international socialism. The Irish community was too “intensely local” for such a strain to take root.

The chapter concludes with a discussion of the debate among the Irish in America about how far they might bend to perhaps achieve “assimilation.” The majority concluded that rampant anti-Catholicism in mainstream America made that next to impossible. It was then an article of secular faith that the West embodied America’s future. By refusing to compromise their core values, the Irish might thus have cut themselves off from that future. Instead, Emmons says, “They built their own West and their own future. Only Irish needed to apply.”

St. Mary’s Catholic Church, Butte, ca 1920.
Credit (probably) Butte-Silver Bow Archives.*

I have only one quibble, and that is not with the author. The publisher’s Product Description describes the book as “masterful yet accessible.” It is certainly masterful. The “accessible” claim is perhaps based on the author’s interweaving of selected Irish-American “folk stories” into the text. Also, the writing style is clear and crisp, and not over-loaded with academic jargon. However, his historical discussions are wide-ranging, tightly reasoned, and (sometimes) controversial. They often require close, careful study to achieve full understanding.

As just one example, consider his discussion of the “West(s)” where the Irish found themselves “beyond the pale.” Emmons calls them subregions of “The West” and says, “I count eight real ones as well as the two constructed ones.” One of the “constructed” subregions is, of course, the mythic West of story, song, and movies – he calls it the “heroic” West. Another subregion, the “Urban West,” had its own characteristics and was “the one most favored by westering Irish.” The author devotes many pages to describing these subregions, sometimes quite extensively. The explanations are fascinating and informative, but a casual perusal could miss important nuances and implications.

Beyond the American Pale is an authoritative and valuable treatise on the history of the Irish in the American West. Readers with an interest in that subject should find it well worth their time.

* Not from book, which has no illustrations other than on the dust jacket.

Review: Beyond Bear's Paw, Jerome A. Greene

Jerome A. Greene,  Beyond Bear’s Paw, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman (2010).

“The wrenching tale of Chief Joseph and his followers is now legendary, but Bear's Paw is not the entire story,” the publisher’s description says. “In fact, nearly three hundred Nez Percés escaped the U.S. Army and fled into Canada. Beyond Bear's Paw is the first book to explore the fate of these ‘nontreaty’ Indians.”

The climatic battle of the 1877 Nez Percés War occurred at Bear’s Paw, Montana, about 45 miles south of the Canadian border – the "Medicine Line" that would protect them from the U.S. Army. The “nontreaty” bands were those that refused to sign the coercive treaty of 1863, which drastically reduced the official Nez Percés reservation.

If it only described what happened to the escapees, Greene’s book would still be a valuable contribution to the history of the Nez Percés and their relations with Anglo-Americans. Thoroughly researched, this history contains a wealth of information about the topic.

Fortunately for us as readers and students, Greene goes “beyond” Bear’s Paw in the best, broad sense. He does not just tell us what happened after Bear’s Paw, he adds crucial context, before and after. Factors far beyond the local actions and oratory profoundly impacted what happened on the spot. Conversely, the fate of the Nimiipuu influenced how other tribes acted, and reacted.

He opens with a background chapter summarizing what brought the Nez Percés to Bear’s Paw. For a more complete treatment, consult Greene’s: Nez Perce Summer, 1877: The U.S. Army and the Nee-Me-Poos Crisis, Montana Historical Society Press, Helena (2000).

It’s important to understand that the Nez Percés War took place about a year after the Custer Massacre at the Little Bighorn. That clearly influenced how the government and the Army reacted to yet another Indian confrontation. After the Custer battle, Army pressure forced many Sioux and Northern Cheyenne Indians onto reservations. However, Sitting Bull and a large contingent of Sioux fled across the Medicine Line into Canada.

This alarmed Canadian authorities on two levels. The presence of such a large body of interlopers – 4,000 to 5,000 by most accounts – put a huge additional strain on northern buffalo herds. This caused hardship for the Canadian tribes, which depended on those herds for food, robes, and other essentials.

Also, by international law, the Sioux were “displaced persons” – given refuge, but not allowed to use Canada as a base to launch raids below the border. (Chief Sitting Bull of the Hunkpapa Sioux. Library of Congress.)

Before the surrender at Bear’s Paw, Nez Percés emissaries traveled north to plead for Sioux help against the Army. Canadian authorities warned the Sioux that they would forfeit their right to asylum if they sent warriors south. When the Nez Percés refugees arrived, authorities had little attention to spare for their plight. They basically evinced “benign neglect,” leaving the Nez Percés to fend for themselves.

The Pacific Northwest bands found some shelter in encampments alongside the Sioux. Unfortunately, a few individuals exploited the situation to practically enslave the newcomers, forcing them to labor excessively for a pittance of food and shelter.

Meanwhile, the Canadians were desperately anxious for an accommodation that would send the Sioux back to the United States. U. S. negotiators countered with a proposal that the Sioux be moved further from the border, to lessen the possibility of sneak attacks. Of course, the Canadians did not have the resources for such an action.

Coincidentally, the first large group of refugees arrived while officials were exploring alternatives with Sioux leaders. The Nimiipuu’s stories and bedraggled condition only hardened Sioux resistance to any notion that they should return south.

Having set some of the context, Greene devotes a chapter to the various avenues that allowed an estimated 290 Nez Percés to reach the border. A fair number of them were out foraging when the Army attacked the main body. Some warriors filtered back into camp to join the fight, but other groups – men, women, and children – hid, under miserable conditions.

Later, Indians like the band under Chief White Bird refused to surrender and slipped out of camp. These escapes gave authorities an excuse – as if they needed any – to repudiate the agreement to return the captured bands to the reservation in Idaho.

This arose from a willful refusal to acknowledge the realities of Nez Percés politics. Tribes like the Nez Percés had no “head chief,” except perhaps a figurehead “appointed” by a white Indian Agent. Instead, they made decisions in a “council of equals.” Leadership depended upon an individual’s prestige and force of character.

Indeed, Chief Joseph surrendered, with his magnificently eloquent “I will fight no more forever” oration. However, in doing so, he spoke only for his own band, and any others who agreed with that decision.

As noted above, the fate of the escapees was heavily intertwined with that of the refugee Sioux. As herds in the north declined, Sioux bands, and a few Nez Percés, did begin to hunt below the border. Occasionally, they clashed with settlers or troops.

Greene’s research discovered yet another complicating factor: White traders routinely exaggerated the danger from these incursions. They hoped to induce the Army to build more posts along the border, providing them with lucrative contracts and customers.

More examination of how Eastern newspaper reports impacted events, for good or ill, might have aided our understanding of some of these issues. But perhaps those accounts were so muddled as to preclude any definitive conclusions.

When imminent starvation finally forced the Sioux’s surrender in 1880-1881, a few Nez Percés gave up also. Authorities sent the Nimiipuu to the Oklahoma reservation in Indian Territory, which the bands called “Eeikish Pah” – “the Hot Place.”

Nez Perce encampment along the Clearwater in Idaho, ca. 1898.

By then, a substantial fraction of the refugees had made their way back to the Northwest, or were on their way. They traveled as small groups. Greene concluded that “the largest [my emphasis] body of returnees to travel together back into the United States was a party of twenty-nine people … ” They also took their time. One returnee said, “I was three years getting back to Lapwai. We returned part of the distance each year.”

Greene devotes considerable space to Chief White Bird, who was eventually murdered under bizarre circumstances. The chief’s story, one of the few with decent documentation, provides one example of the trials faced by the relatively small number of refugees who stayed in Canada.

Many of those individuals eventually married into local tribes. Recently, despite a gap of generations, venturesome families have traced some of these intermarriage links and arranged reunions. Green concludes on a hopeful note: “That both groups today have sought and claimed their common heritage is a measure of their strength and unity after so long a time.”

Book Review: Good Times All Gone

The Good Times Are All Gone Now. Author: Julie Whitesel Weston. Publishing: University of Oklahoma Press, Norman. © Julie Whitesel Weston, 2009. [All images from the book.]

Catalogs and reviews bill this book as a “memoir of place,” which is certainly accurate. Still, in the end, it’s the people in a place that really make it memorable. (You may recall the buildings or landscaping where you worked before. But what you remember most, for good or ill, are your former co-workers, and bosses.)

We do read passages about rusty junk, tumble-down structures, polluted ponds and streams, and heaps of toxic waste. Only shrubs grew on the mountainsides. The timber was cut for lumber or scorched by forest fires, and never grew back. Constant (but largely ignored) swirls of acrid smoke and pollution blighted the growth of new trees.

I started the book with a misconception. The publicist’s e-mail asked if I’d like to review a new release from the UO Press. From the brief description, I expected a history of the Kellogg, Idaho, mining area. Since what I “do” is Idaho history, that sounded great to me.

When the copy arrived, I plunged right in, expecting a “normal” history approach. I missed that phrase about “memoir of place.” Thus, the mix of anecdote and commentary was somewhat off-putting. Despite that, the stories drew me in. Stories about people, sometimes told in their own interviewed words.

They resonated with me for two special reasons. First, the author and I graduated from high school the same year. Perhaps more importantly, we both grew up in small towns. (Actually, I spent those years in the country, or in towns even smaller than Kellogg.)

However, you don’t need to be older or a small-towner or a country boy/girl to get something from these narratives. For, in the final analysis, these are tales of human courage and endurance. But the funny thing is: they, by and large, did not view themselves as courageous or enduring. They were not “coping” with brutally dangerous working conditions or a degraded, harmful environment.

No, this was simply life – some good mixed with some bad – and they were just living it. I myself knew many individuals like them.

Do not think, however, that these people did not feel the pain. They did, as anyone would. Still, while some might not even know the word “stoicism,” they displayed it. Nor were they blind to the occasional hard times. They “muddled through” as best they could, and were later proud of having “made it.”

To a considerable extent, they coped through a sense of community. Everything in their lives, directly or indirectly revolved around the mine. That common bond helped them support each other through hard times and grief.

Back then, “No one locked their doors.” Like Weston, I clearly recall my mother sticking her head inside a front door and calling, “Yoo-hoo. Anybody home?”

Along with many fascinating stories, we learn of Julie growing up. You sense a certain wonder from her present self at what her younger self accepted as “normal.” Children only avoided the most poisonous soil and water; they swam in and played on the rest. And only outsiders reacted to the acidic smog. Her father, a physician, treated a steady flow of injured miners. She only knew that all those cases kept him late at the hospital.

Consider that hospital. Almost universally, commentators frame the term “company town” in a pejorative sense. “Sixteen tons and deeper in debt,” goes the song lyric. In that view, the company store in the company town turned men into wage slaves.

That is not how the folks in Kellogg saw it. “Uncle Bunker” provided the hospital, and also built a new high school gym. It bought uniforms and instruments for the band, awarded numerous scholarships, and distributed other perks.

Cynics will say, “They just wanted to keep those poor deluded employees happy, so they’d work harder.” Perhaps. But, for many reasons, most would have stayed and worked hard even without those extra benefits.

In any case, we also learn much about Julie’s tangled view of her father. A god to the townspeople, “Doc” was subject to angry, hurtful flare-ups at home. Still, she longed for his approval. It’s not clear that she ever really got it. He supported her education, but she describes their later relationship as “an uneasy peace.” His approval was, I infer, grudging at best.

We can all relate to her high school years: a town mad about the local sports teams, seeking peer group approval, boys, trying to build a unique “personhood,” and all that. One story was rather sad, but telling. She studied hard and excelled in the school’s band ensemble. That should have been worth some praise from her music-loving father, a skilled musician himself. Yet she gave that up to join the drill team. Her point: “Excellence and intelligence didn’t matter. I wanted to be pretty.”

Weston’s narrative opens, and then ends, with scenes from after the mines have closed. Toppling the giant smelter stacks becomes a symbol of the final end of Kellogg’s old-style “good times.” Of course, the mines had long been closed by then and the town had nearly died. When she visited for the demolition, the town’s rebirth as a destination resort had finally begun to “take.”

As I asserted above, “place” is really about people. This book chronicles the stories of those who lived in Kellogg during its mid-century prosperity as a mining town. It also suggests how life there shaped Julie Whitesel Weston’s character and expectations. By the final scenes, however, most of the people she knew were gone. New hotels and condos dwarfed most vestiges of its mining history. She ended on a hopeful note, but also admitted, “Kellogg was no longer my town.”