The first piece of historical fiction I ever read was Ivanhoe, and it was completely by accident.
I was ten or thereabouts, and had just read Edward Eager's splendid fantasy Knight's Castle. For those who haven't read it, Knight's Castle is about two children, Roger and Ann, who visit their cousins, Jack and Eliza, in Baltimore for the summer. Roger brings his toy soldiers, the children's aunt takes them to see the movie of Ivanhoe and gives them a toy castle complete with knights and ladies, and of course magic ensues, from the knights staging a baseball game (complete with "ye old rhubarb" as the umpire botches a call) and an attack by the Rough Riders upon the forces of Brian de Bois-Guilbert.
It was all splendid fun, and shortly thereafter my parents presented me with a copy of Ivanhoe for Christmas. I didn't go completely stone gonzo for the Middle Ages then (that had to wait for my freshman year of college, when I read Dante for the first time) but I thoroughly enjoyed Ivanhoe. I also came to love historical fiction with plenty of action, plenty of characters, and a long, complex plot.
In short, swashbucklers.
Give me a book with a dashing, conflicted lead, witty dialogue, and a nice twisty plot, and I'm happy. Among my favorites over the years have been everything from classics like The Scarlet Pimpernel and The Three Musketeers to more modern versions, like Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles, Bernard Cornwell's A Crowning Mercy, or Patrick O'Brien's wonderful Aubrey/Maturin series about the Age of Sail.
Others, alas, are simply mediocre, with sloppy research, an unrealistic plot, or a Mary Sue/Marty Stu lead. Reading them is more pain than pleasure, and there are some that I've abandoned over the years.
In short, they're Swashbucklers So Bad They're Good.
Tonight for your consideration we have three big, brawling, sprawling historical novels. All were bestsellers, two were made into classic films, and one spawned a cult that makes the average basement-dwelling Star Wars fan look like a sane, responsible pillar of the community. Start swashing your buckles, fellow Kossacks, and come with me!
Anthony Adverse, by Hervey Allen. This book, written by a regional historian from Western Pennsylvania, was published in 1933 to great acclaim. It was also the source of a famous swashbuckling film starring Frederic March, Olivia de Havilland, Claude Rains, and Gale Sondergaard.
Anthony Adverse, unlike many swashbucklers, is still in print almost eighty years after its publication, and no wonder. Its 1,000+ pages have everything to satisfy the lover of adventure, derring-do, and romance, all played out against the backdrop of the late 18th and early 19th centuries: an illegitimate hero who struggles against his background; a beautiful, deceitful woman; cruel nobles; an inheritance fight; lovers torn apart by circumstance and greed. It's still readable despite a somewhat archaic prose style, and the movie is widely considered a classic costume drama.
So, you ask, what is the problem?
Very simple: the ending is one of the worst, most depressing, most anticlimactic things I have ever read in my life. That includes the last pages of Jude the Obscure, which left me with a permanent dislike of any and everything by Thomas Hardy.
I'll spare you the (literally) gory details, but suffice to say that just when it looks as if Anthony Adverse, who's fought for his heritage, his woman, and his life across pretty much half the world, has found happiness, he goes out to cut wood on his new homestead and loses control of his axe.
Yes, his axe. And in what appears to be a foreshadowing of the Clint Malarchuk incident, the author has his hero slowly, painfully, and ultimately futilely fight to survive after whacking himself in the femoral artery. And to add insult to injury, a group of local brats come across his memorial years later and vandalize it, leaving the reader with the distinct impression that Anthony Adverse lived, loved, fought, struggled, and ultimately died for nothing.
So much for swashbucklers being fun.
The Physician, by Noah Gordon. This 1986 novel is not quite a swashbuckler, since the hero, Rob Cole, is a physician, not a rogue or adventurer. However, it still has many of the elements that go to make a sprawling, beloved historical adventure novel: action spread out over many years and many countries, an appealing hero, plenty of genuine historical figures interacting with Rob and his friends, and some nicely researched detail about medieval Jewish life in Persia, the great physician Ibn Sina (Avicenna), and the city of Isfahan.
If that weren't enough, The Physician was named one of the ten most beloved books of all time at the 1999 Madrid Book Fair. It's never been out of print, and is currently under option by Hollywood, although it's reportedly in what is politely known as "development hell."
So why didn't I devour it in greedy gulps? Why did I read the first page, snarl in disgust, and damn near wing the book across the room? Why didn't I love it and feed it and care for it and call it "George" read it until the spine cracked and the pages were dog eared and the cover fell off from being immersed in the bathtub one too many times?
Very simple: because Noah Gordon, for all his research into medieval medicine and history, starts his novel by having a rouged and painted whore, her stays undone and bodice open, wander through the stews of 11th century London past the hovel where Rob Cole and his family live.
Gentle readers, this is what a woman in 11th century London would have worn. Note that there are no stays, no bodices, and no rouge, although it's entirely possible that a whore wandering through the London stews might well have access to exotic foreign cosmetics.
I love books, and I love historical fiction. I'm willing to forgive an awful lot, like the time when Dorothy Dunnett has Francis Crawford quote a Babylonian manuscript that wasn't discovered until centuries after his death. But an error this blatant, and this obvious, on the first page, is something up with which I cannot put.
Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell. Everyone knows Gone with the Wind, either through the thick, exciting book or the long, exciting movie. Scarlett O'Hara, defiant, proud, and hellbent on never being hungry again, is a genuine American icon. Her struggle to regain her family's lost wealth regardless of who she has to hurt and what she has to do is as familiar to modern Americans as the adventures of Oliver Twist and Natty Bumppo were to an earlier generation.
Gone with the Wind is also an early example of the swashbuckling epic aimed at women. Scarlett may never use a sword but she's handy with a pistol. She has no qualms about marrying for money (twice), runs her second husband's business better than he does, and is tougher, stronger, and more active (in every sense) than almost anyone else in the novel. She's that most American of creatures, the self-made survivor, and it's a shock to realize that she's only sixteen when the book opens and around 28 when it ends.
Scarlett is a truly great character, and Gone with the Wind has never been out of print. Margaret Mitchell never wrote another novel, but she didn't have to: her masterpiece, and the film based on it, created a picture of the Civil War and Reconstruction that are indelibly part of popular culture. Books, dolls, parodies, two authorized sequels, barbecue dress patterns, even conventions where "Windies" can talk about their favorite book, get autographs from the few surviving film actors, and buy memorabilia - Gone with the Wind is an industry unto itself.
It is also one of the most pernicious books in the American canon for its biased and deceptive treatment of race:
--The planters are gallant knights and their ladies fair, with nary a mention that their aristocratic lifestyle is based on the buying, selling, and exploitation of their slaves.
--Mammy never once expresses anything but loyalty to "Miz Ellen's chile" and stays with Scarlett despite her capricious temper and bad behavior. That poor Hattie McDaniel managed to make this character human and win an Oscar for her performance makes one wonder what she could have done with a decent script and a non-stereotyped character.
--Scarlett's abuse of Prissy in the famous "I don't know nothing about birthin' no babies!" scene only hints at the constant and unremitting abuse of black house servants by their white mistresses.
--The Ku Klux Klan are noble defenders of Southern womanhood, not violent enforcers of white supremacy, functioning, to quote author Pat Conroy, as "a benign combination of the Elks Club and a men's equestrian society."
--Former field hands during Reconstruction behave
as creatures of small intelligence might naturally be expected to do. Like monkeys or small children turned loose among treasured objects whose value is beyond their comprehension, they ran wild—either from perverse pleasure in destruction or simply because of their ignorance."
--One of the house servants is named "Pork," while Mammy appears to have no given name at all.
I still watch Gone with the Wind when it's on TV, and I still think Clark Gable is one of the sexiest men who's ever walked this earth. But that doesn't mean I don't wonder whether Mammy ever dreamed of escape, or Pork saved up his money and moved to a place where he could name himself after something other than a cut of meat. Gone with the Wind has influenced what several generations of Americans believe about the Civil War, Southern women, and Reconstruction, and until its readers understand that, even allowing for when she wrote, Mitchell still played fast and loose with history, it's going to remain a problematic book.
So, dear fellow Kossacks, what are your favorite historical novels that don't quite hit the mark? The talking stick is passing around the circle, so speak up and let the rest of us know!