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Tag: fiction

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How to Research History Like a Novelist – Warm water & paper towels

Tip-tapping out some new words in my current story and my main character uses “Warm water and a handful of paper towels…” And it occurs to me, ‘Wait. When were paper towels invented?’ (I readily admit, this doesn’t sound like the most riveting action, but … you’ll see.)

I don’t stop every time a question like this occurs to me while writing. It kills flow. Usually, I put a bracket [] around it and come back to it — I drop brackets in for fact checks, or anything that needs extra attention after the first draft is done, like when I need character names. Sometimes I just don’t have a name ready, so I write [bad guy’s favorite plumber] or whatever so I know who it is and find a suitable name.  But a quick glance at Wikipedia

1921, Brown Co. Paper Towels
By 1921 (when this promotional photograph was taken, the brown, folded paper towels from Nibroc Paper Towels were everywhere. Similar products are still in use today. Photo courtesy of the Brown Company Collection, Plymouth State University.

should answer this important paper towel question for me. Right?

According to the article I found on Wikipedia, paper towels were invented in 1907 and look to be commonplace by the 1920s. Perfect. For my later 1930s story, my main character could totally use him some paper towels.

Running an image search, I found a wonderful, in-depth history of the leading manufacturer of paper towels in the period, the Brown Company of New Hampshire. The article mentioned that during the Depression (i.e. during my later 1930s story), “Demand decreased. Profits shrank. In 1935, Brown Company filed for bankruptcy and the Brown family lost ownership.”

So, the later 1930s were not a booming time to be in the paper towel business, nor a great time of using them. So, it looks like instead of “Warm water and a handful of paper towels…” it’s going to be something different. For now. The whole scene may get scrapped in revision, but that moment is now far better, and a small moment to reveal more of my Character’s character, and that’s a good thing.

As a National History Day judge, I’m among the chorus of historians who bemoan the use of Wikipedia as the only stop for research by students. Not that Wikipedia isn’t amazing. Not all that long ago, the question of when paper towels were invented would probably leave me at the mercy of an old-ish marketing pamphlet giving precious little actual information, and I’d have to wait a few days to get that answer through a research librarian. But really, Wikipedia is only a starting point. Without what was there (and first of all, let’s appreciate the fact there was an entry on the history of paper towels in the first place!), I wouldn’t have had my other information for search criteria to dig just a little deeper.

If I really had to know as close to 100% as possible, I’d dig up financials of places like the place my hero is using paper towels at the state, county, or city archives. I’d check with the corporate collections, and even try to interview some people who were alive in that place and time. But this is just paper towels. Wikipedia saying yes they were available would be fine for 99.999% of readers. The only reader whose reading experience would be ruined would be the timber industry historian, but you know what; I want that person to read and enjoy my books too.

So, thank God for the internet, but really, thank you for the people putting their research ‘out there’ never really knowing how, when, or to whom it may prove useful.

Like this post? Here’s more about historical research:
BINGO! At the Intersection of History and Slang
How to know Things are Bound to Get Worse

 

About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes and works as a museum curator.

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Old Gems found in Fourteen Great Detective Stories

I dipped into this wonderful old anthology over the past couple of weeks.  I once actively collected the Modern Library series, and this book was on those shelves, though it’s in far from collectible condition. It does have a fun old gift inscription and a big old crease through the front board, which somehow makes the book look more friendly.

Earlier I read an essay about how the story The Case of  Oscar Brodski, one of the Dr. Thorndyke mysteries by R. Austin Freeman was revolutionary for being the first We See Who Commits the Crime, Will They Be Caught style of stories.  In old essays about crime fiction, this is often called an Inverted Detective Story.  I had never read Dr. Thorndyke and was not familiar at all with The Case of Oscar Brodski.  Then, VOILA, springing forth from my own shelves, there it was. I think Freeman’s story holds up and was pretty good, even to this modern reader.

However, also in this book, the real treat was Cornell Woolrich’s short story The Dancing Detective.  Wow!  For suspense, menace, and just a straight-up creepy story, what a knockout! The narrator’s voice was so enjoyable, with just the right amount of dark humor. The contemporary slang, also very well done and hilarious. This short story exceeds a lot of stuff coming out today, but then again, Cornell Woolrich is still considered a master of the genre.

 

The stories included in this edition (earlier editions had slightly different contents):

Bailey, H.C. The Yellow Slugs
Bentley, E.C. The Little Mystery
Chesterton, G.K. The Blue Cross
Christie, Agatha The Third-Floor Flat 
Dickson, Carter The House of Goblin Wood
Doyle, A. ConanThe Red-Headed League 
Freeman, R. Austin The Case of Oscar Brodski
Futrelle, Jacques The Problem Of Cell 13
Poe, Edgar Allan The Purloined Letter
Post, Melville Davisson The Age of Miracles
Queen, Ellery The Adventure of the African Traveler 
Sayers, Dorothy L. The Bone of Contention
Stout, Rex Instead of Evidence
Woolrich, Cornell The Dancing Detective

About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes and works as a museum curator.

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“Bingo.” At the intersection of History & Slang

BINGO

I can get swept along when writing, especially when writing dialogue. I’ve heard this state of writing called “flow” and that makes sense to me. Cruising along in my current story, set sometime around 1935 and out of the mouth of one of my characters comes the word “Bingo.”  I’ve never used the word outside the game with the balls and whirlywheels myself, but this fictional gent decided to say it in my story.  It jolted me out of the story and I thought: Did anyone even use the word Bingo in the ’30s?  Just one of the things I worry about.

BINGO
BINGO

In my story, I mean “Bingo” in the sense of “you got it” not “I have aligned 5 arbitrary letter-number combinations, give me a prize.”  Etymological dictionaries on my shelf say maybe Bingo goes back to 1815, the other says maybe only 1936 without much explanation.  Not very helpful.  I want my stories to capture language as it was used, to sound natural but be historically…well, probable if not absolutely correct.

Etymological dictionaries saying it was used in 1815, so yes, it would fine in a story set in the 1930s just isn’t good enough.  In historical research, we sometimes get to that point of proving if something was at all possible and ignore if it was probable.  It’s setting a too low bar for historical accuracy.

This is where Google Books’ Ngram Viewer can be helpful.  It uses the collective bajillion-zillion words scanned by Google Books and charts them by year published.  You can use it to chart a word or phrase’s popularity in all of GoogleBooks 450 million scanned published works.  It’s not definitive, and may not perfectly reflect normal conversation, but certainly helpful to see how frequently the word was used in print.  I don’t think it includes newspapers, which would be very useful if it would.

Turns out 1930-something isn’t a great time of the word Bingo.  It was around, and was used earlier according to this chart, but has been climbing in popularity since then. The true high-water mark came in 1976, apparently.  No idea why that would be, but that’s for someone else to chase.  I have a story to get back to.

Bingo

Like this post? Here’s more about historical research:
How to know Things are Bound to get Worse
How to Research History like a Novelist

About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes and works as a museum curator.

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Noir Renaissance?

A Noir Renaissance?

Probably the best essay I’ve read on noir fiction in a very long time, addressing the whiteness of noir, and the potential of its resurgence, making the point that noir has a place in protest literature.  I think it absolutely has that chance, but not many writers take it.  I certainly haven’t, but it’s something I’ll think about.

Nicholas Seeley, the author of the article, gives a good definition of noir stories as well:

By “noir,” I mean something more than a general tone of bleakness and dysfunction. … Anglo-American fiction evolved in the grip of a controlling public morality, which demanded the representation of behavior only within certain socially acceptable lines. The classic crime story, the kind written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Dame Agatha Christie, is the whodunit: it takes place in an essentially orderly universe, with a common understanding of good and evil. Crime here is a dangerous anomaly, but order can be restored by a hero-detective who investigates and, eventually, unmasks the criminal: revealing evil for what it is, giving it a physical location in an individual, and in the process, re-affirming the innocence of the other characters.

Noir, as it emerged in the middle of a violent century, said to hell with all that. Its world was chaotic, baroque and hypocritical. Crime doesn’t disturb this world, it’s foundational to it. Noir stories gave the stage to criminals and their motivations, which range from unspeakable passions to a firm conviction that their particular crime serves a greater good. A detective may pursue such a criminal, but noir reveals the line between them to be a product of chance and circumstance—if, indeed, such a line exists at all.

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Courtesy The Internet Archive

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To new beginnings

Notebook and coffee

This is definitely not my first blog post.

I had a blog about book collecting and bibliophilia for many years over on blogger.  I’m active over on tumblr too, but that isn’t so much blogging as a constant stream of amusing/pretty/cool stuff.  I post a lot of photos and quotes and things I happen to like, (i.e. typewriters. I love me some typewriters.)  It’s more immediate too, so there will be music links and funny memes, you know, tumblr stuff. Here, I’ll share links to articles, tools, and especially historic research resources I find helpful.  I may occasionally post music to write to, or cool images.

Here, I’ll talk about my research, my writing, whatever I’m working on as I progress toward my writing goals.  What are those goals?  Well, in the short-term, I’ve managed to get a piece of flash-fiction placed with cool series from Akashic Books.  Next is to finish another short (but longer than flash) piece and get it placed somewhere.  Longer term, I’m working on what I’m seeing as a novella series, and then another series of full-length novels.  Both series are historic thrillers/mysteries. One of those series grabbed me by the collar and is dragging me along.

What I’m working on now: a novella set in and around 1930s Denver. I was not alive in the 1930s nor have I lived in Denver, so there’s some research to do.  This story also features a main character who I think will be a series character.  Anyway, the short has been a lot of fun, using info I’ve dug up previously, but haven’t used.

I’ve gotten to know the main character  in this one pretty well.  He first appeared as a supporting cast member of my first attempt at a novel back in 2007 or so.  Through edits, rewrites, and dumping the whole thing and starting over a couple times, he’s emerged as one of the two main characters of that novel — he was too fascinating, and too much fun to hang out with compared to my original main character.

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Anyway, thanks for reading.  No spoilers, but amazing poster served as a bit of inspiration this week:

h0849-l93439607

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Book Review: The Infidel Stain by MJ Carter

 

It’s been three years since Jeremiah Blake and bibliophile William Avery teamed up in India for what was one of the most enjoyable books I’ve read recently (The Strangler Vine) — getting in on the ground floor as it were of a new series.  The Infidel Stain takes us to London in the early 1840s, into the orbit of publishers and pornographers, dissidents and rebels.  Oh, and of course, murder.  It’s one of those novels that just oozes with atmosphere of dank and dark London, after a terrifying time in the dangerous jangals of India. Our heroes have become something of celebrities given their encounter with Xavier Mountstuart.  We learn a little more about the mysterious Jeremiah Blake’s background in this novel, which was interesting, to say the least.  We don’t get much more of Avery, which I would have enjoyed.  Maybe the only thing I’d have expected was that ardent bibliophile William Avery, on a rare visit to The City would indulge himself in a visit to a bookshop.

Historically rich, and textured, a thriller that had me reading late in huge gulps.

Ok, an admission: I liked the first book better.  But with reports of Blake & Avery 3 well underway, I can’t wait to see what happens next. This book was published as The Printer’s Coffin in the United Kingdom.

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