authorial ponderings on the reader/writer interface and the weight of history

[lagilman]

So, brought a story to the crit group last night and got some very useful comments (as per usual, I was being Too Subtle in making my point -- half the time I feel like I'm slapping people over the head with a clue-by-four by the time I'm done with revisions, but oh well). However, I also noted something that was both interesting, and disturbing.

The backstory of Protag1 takes place in WWII Germany, and involves the influence of a Nazi officer on then-young Protag1. Protag2, almost a century later, happens to be an Israeli. The assumption was made by several members of the group that this was a story, however indirectly, about the Holocaust.

Um, no. Not even buried deep in my subconscious, really [Protag1 self-identifies as Arab, not German]. But I wonder now if that's going to be an inescapable conclusion by my readers. If so, it's going to obscure the actual point of the story (indeed, the readers who assumed A did not get B at all, while the readers who did not assume A seemed to grasp B). Are we that steeped in history (usually a good thing) that nothing in the present setting/action of a story can outweigh the past influences of German vs Jew?

(as a writer, a history buff, and a Jew with German friends, this is a question of more than academic interest to me, actually, and one that's going to keep me thinking even after the story's off to market)

It is possible that the various ages of my readers came into play, now that I think about it. Hrm. I need to try this on a 20-something...


And no, I really can't extract the German element from the story, not without making it an entirely different story, and changing the other protag to another Semitic culture doesn't work either, for reasons having nothing to do with religion and everything to do with culture. Argh. Oh well, this is why we call it "work."

Comments

[mtlawson.livejournal.com]

And no, I really can't extract the German element from the story, not without making it an entirely different story, and changing the other protag to another Semitic culture doesn't work either, for reasons having nothing to do with religion and everything to do with culture.

Oh. My suggestion was going to be if you could switch Axis Powers from Germany to Italy so as to avoid the Holocaust connotations.

I suspect that part of the problem with the Holocaust is distance from the actual events surrounding WW2. The farther away we get, the more easily we overlook the complexities surrounding the war. People will remember the big things -the Holocaust, Pearl Harbor, the Blitz, the Manhattan Project, and a few major battles- but the details fade. Therefore, when we say "Jew", "German", WW2, we automatically make that jump to "Holocaust".

A baseball analogy would be a story based in the years between the World Wars. Most people would automatically assume "baseball" and that era and immediately jump to "Black Sox", "Babe Ruth" or "the Yankees".

Perhaps the best way around this is to pull back from the descriptions that hit people over the head with "German" and WW2, using instead more subtle terms. (Yeah, it sounds like this might be at odds with your group.)

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

*stares*

*goes and re-reads*

...okay, I didn't think, not even on another reading with this in mind, that it was about the Holocaust. The bulk of the story is set in the Holocaust era, yes (in its way; the flip side is that really very little is set in that era), but it's about something much, much older than that: that's why it matters that they're Israeli and Palestinian (which, regardless of your intentions regarding culture vs religion, I have to take largely as religious because I don't know the cultures well enough).

It's...agh. I didn't write it and it almost hurts that that's where people are going with it. I guess I can see why, but...no. That's not what the story is about. It's...about the price of love, I think. The price, the danger, the choice, the weight, the /history/...and it actually has very little to do with the WW2 era, per se. That's just the mirror. And I'm 36, if that's of any use. :)

[lagilman]

Ladies and gents, my Perfect Reader. Even if she does give spoilery comments. *grin*

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

I was trying not to be too spoilery! You can delete it if you want! :)

[lagilman]

*laugh* No, it's okay. If the story ever finds a home, most people will have forgotten this post by the time they read it, assuming they even read it.

It was reassuring that you and my other pre-group reader 'got' the story, meaning I'm doing most of it right -- and the rest is just fine-tuning. All critique is opinion, and I'm used to filtering it to get what's actually useful for the story I wrote, rather than the story the reader made an assumption I was writing. It's more the assumption that "Oh, Nazis, and look, there's a Jew, so it must be about the Holocaust" worries me.

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

(ok, I guess thematically it was a very spoilery comment. still, I was trying! :))

See, as a reader I basically go the other way entirely: Jew, yes, Nazi, yes, but given what we're told about the protagonist I think it's nearly impossible that it *could* be a story about the Holocaust. I...*squinchy face* Will email you more. After I am done writing this werewolf story. :)

[bill-leisner.livejournal.com]

Speaking from a point of complete ignorance of the story, I would have to say, yes: an author mentions "Nazi" and "Jew" in the same piece, it's inevitable that some if not most readers are going to have the Holocaust pop into their heads. (The ones who don't read "Nazi" and think "Obamacare," that is.)

I don't think it's inevitable that people will assume the story is about the Holocaust, though, especially if a) Protag1 does not self-identify as a German (much less a Nazi), b) Protag2 doesn't necessarily have family roots in 1930s-40s Europe (as I think you may be implying in the small print), c) the story is nearly a century after WWII, and Protag2 is several generations removed from that period of history, and of course d) if you've created characters that rise above simple labels like "Nazi," "Arab," and "Jew," which I have no doubt you have.

Not having read the story, I am curious why the German element and the Israeli element are so important, if this incident in the shared history of the two cultures is not supposed to be somewhere in the back of readers' minds? What would change if young Protag1 were influenced by an Italian soldier? Or a racist, anti-Semetic British soldier? (The Axis didn't have the corner market on hate, after all.)