Guy Gavriel Kay parle d'Under Heaven

[jerome]

Une nouvelle interview de Guy Gavriel Kay est dispo sur le net à propos de son roman Under Heaven. Elle est à lire ici.

En voici un extrait :
"Given that one of the themes in Under Heaven is how historians shape people’s perceptions of events, did you find this to be a major issue, yourself, in the course of your research?

What a terrific question. You are permitted to take a bow. I need to try to stay brief again! The short answer is that we all write (and read) from within our own culture, time, worldview. I actually see this as one of the many strengths of being upfront, prima facie, about treating the past through the window of the fantastic ... it is dead-honest about limitations in our ability to ‘go back there’. In fact, the motif you note in Under Heaven, the use of ‘long view’ perspectives on events in the novel at times is meant partly as a commentary on what you are raising here. So, in fact, it was less a major issue in my research than it is a major issue in my book! I’ve been fascinated by this for years. In Lord of Emperors, several books back for me, one of the (several) meanings of the title is that the writer, the artist, the chronicler of an age or an emperor is, in a sense, the lord of emperors – because he can define the figure or time for posterity, if effective enough.

Do you think this concept can be applied to fiction writers, too, if their work is effective enough, and (I should add) sufficiently widely read? Not that it has to involve historical characters specifically, but it makes me think about Wolf Hall, for instance, and the number of people who now see Thomas Cromwell in a new light because of it.

I almost tucked my thoughts about this into the last (long!) answer. Should have known you’d lure me there! I think an even better example is Shakespeare and Richard III, where the world’s view of that king was (brilliantly) shaped by a piece of propaganda theatre written on behalf of the Tudor usurpers! That’s certainly a work of fiction, ‘inspired’ by real events (and by shrewd political calculation). Consider also Procopius, the chronicler of Justinian’s reign ... his ‘official’ histories are boring and dutiful, and largely unread. His Secret History is scandalous, libellous, salacious, even obscene as to Theodora. And keeps being reprinted. I think Wolf Hall is a fine novel that might (just) gild its lily a bit ... the intent to force or evoke a rethinking of Cromwell and More feels just a little didactic. But as to your core point: some who revered More via “A Man For All Seasons” might indeed shift their thinking, others who had no idea of More or Cromwell may need ... another reverse-revisionist work in forty years to offset Mantel’s? In the same way, Josephine Tey created a vogue for Richard III with The Daughter of Time, even a fan club for him, and current writers on those turbulent, incompletely-documented times have to try to steer a path between two wildly polarized views, don’t they? There is another snag here: some writers might decide to do a ‘revision’ on some famous figure just ... because they can. It might sell books. It is fun. What happens if readers find ‘truth’ in these? Antony Beevor, the British historian wrote last year of coming out of the film of The Da Vinci Code and hearing a man say to his date, ‘It really makes you think, doesn’t it?’ Ouch, Beevor said, in effect. Ouch, I concur.
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