That was an interesting entry. I think what she's talking about can be generalized to any time someone talks with enthusiasm about something that has intrinsic sadness or horror in it--quite apart from history.
I do sometimes talk with morbid delight or fascination about something horrible. Not because I don't understand the real horror. Not because I genuinely like, oh, freezing to death, or dying in a volcanic eruption. Not because I don't care about how people who die like that must suffer, and how those who know them must suffer. Just because... I don't know. It's a kind of bravado, maybe. Kind of daring the horror to try to horrify me? I don't know. I do know that when I've upset people with talk like that, I've been truly sorry for the pain I've caused. I try to avoid inflicting that talk on people who might be hurt by it. .... But I will probably keep doing it, when I think there's no risk of someone being hurt.
Lots of writers have a kind of ghoulish, morbid streak. (God knows I do.) But yeah, there's a problem when you show that streak to people who have been personally hurt by the thing that fascinates you.
I think part of the problem here is the implication of not taking the event in question seriously enough to research it well--nipping it for its entertainment value, which can feel like a thing used and cast aside like an old tissue.
Having read the books, I felt that Willis did take the Blitz and the situation of the people caught up in it seriously.
Her choice of wording in her comment was, however, unfortunate. I assume that she meant the words ironically, somewhat like Graham Greene's "splinter of ice in the heart" about taking the worst possible situations and shamelessly using them in fiction, which is something a lot of writers do.
Also while Blackout/All Clear were not comic novels, it is possible to set humorous stories in dark places. MASH and the First World War Blackadder spring to mind.
PS I suppose the problem is that different people have different tolerances for different things. Whilst parts of Blackout/All Clear irritated me, they didn't hit any hot buttons. However, I remember reading a short story about a school being buried in a landslide and it made me sad and angry because I thought, you don't have to make up a story about this, it really happened at Aberfan. The story, though no doubt well meaning, seemed to me to trivialise a real incident.
I do sometimes talk with morbid delight or fascination about something horrible. Not because I don't understand the real horror. Not because I genuinely like, oh, freezing to death, or dying in a volcanic eruption. Not because I don't care about how people who die like that must suffer, and how those who know them must suffer. Just because... I don't know. It's a kind of bravado, maybe. Kind of daring the horror to try to horrify me? I don't know. I do know that when I've upset people with talk like that, I've been truly sorry for the pain I've caused. I try to avoid inflicting that talk on people who might be hurt by it. .... But I will probably keep doing it, when I think there's no risk of someone being hurt.
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
You can research from here to the next century, but if you treat the period and its people like a theme park, well, Kari sums it up.
Reply
Her choice of wording in her comment was, however, unfortunate. I assume that she meant the words ironically, somewhat like Graham Greene's "splinter of ice in the heart" about taking the worst possible situations and shamelessly using them in fiction, which is something a lot of writers do.
Also while Blackout/All Clear were not comic novels, it is possible to set humorous stories in dark places. MASH and the First World War Blackadder spring to mind.
Reply
Reply
Leave a comment