'Some stories are hard to tell. During a period known as the Australian History Wars, consideration of the national past was vexed, contested territory. There was marked vitriol – to an unprecedented extent – in public debate about the “reality” and interpretation of the events of colonisation. This study investigates the output of novelists who were brave enough to contribute to this vital cultural moment and the issues of politics and form they attempted to negotiate.
'This book deals with the publically-waged debate over the suitability of novelists to render authoritative versions of significant events or periods as its starting point. From there, however, it delves deeper into the politics of form, analysing the connection between the realist modes of traditional, empiricist histories and the various explorations of the colonial past that have been figured through different historical novels. The forms of these novels range from classic realism to frontier Gothic, various Romanticisms, magical realism, and reflexive post-modernism.
'The relative formal freedoms offered through historical novels, when compared to conventional history writing offer the chance to confront the past in all of its contradiction and complexity. The terrain of the postmodern and historical sublime — of loss and uncertainly — is one in which historical fiction can perform an important political and ethical role. The immeasurably vast space which lies beyond history, that space of those who are often unrepresented, often victims, often silent, is an abyss into which fiction, particularly historical fiction, is able imaginatively and ethically to descend.' (Publication summary)
1. Refusing to be Silent
While the early 1990's saw the Mabo and Wik land rights decisions and the mid-1990s the release of the groundbreaking Bringing them Home Report, the years that followed have brought little of what might be termed 'progress' in terms of racial equality. The twelve years of the Howard government (1996-2007) must be mentioned within this context as it is from this period that the most virulent expressions of racism and social conservatism emerged. This was partly to do with the conservative policies of the coalition and partly to do with an increasingly volatile global political climate. Considerable damage was done to the intellectual and cultural life of Australia during this time. After the wave of optimism following Rudd's election and the apology to Indigenous Australians, there has been a disappointing lack of practical action...' (Introduction)
'‘Some stories are hard to tell’, says the blurb of Jo Jones’ recent book on fiction and the history wars. For a debate that swirls around the limits of history and fiction to get at ‘the truth’, this statement is perhaps truest of all. While the history wars have been characterised by politicised contests over the past, arguing over terminology such as ‘invasion’ and ‘settlement’, ‘commemoration’ and ‘celebration’, it was the contest over ‘history’ and ‘fiction’ that caught historians and fiction writers off-guard. When the novelist Kate Grenville suggested that her book, The Secret River, was able to straddle the polarisation of the history wars because fiction can come to history from the perspective of empathy and imagination, several historians bristled. Rather than being bound by contests over evidence and interpretation, a ‘novelist can stand up on a stepladder and look down at this, outside the fray, and say there is another way to understand this’, Grenville insisted. In response, historians such as Mark McKenna and Inga Clendinnen refused to accept that disciplinary history might be less equipped to understand or interpret the past.' (Introduction)
'I was about to begin writing this review when I read an article by Grace Karskens in the latest Griffith Review, concerning a visit she recently made to Dyarubbin (aka the Hawkesbury River) in the company of three Darug women and the historian/archaeologist Paul Irish. Together they are uncovering the Aboriginal history of the early settlers’ farms that flank the river – a hidden history that runs in parallel (and sometimes conflicts) with the well-known pioneer history of this country. The name of their project, ‘The Real Secret River: Dyarubbin’, instantly brings to mind Kate Grenville’s award-winning novel, which of course is set on the Hawkesbury.' (Introduction)
'The vexed question of what distinguishes historical novels from other genres has yet to be resolved. From the time of Homer, and looking forward to the more complex treatment of history by postmodern and post-postmodern novels, many definitions have been offered. None has completely satisfied. When the history in question is a significant event such as the Holocaust or, in the case of Falling Backwards: Australian Historical Fiction and the History Wars, ‘cultural and political significance … of the period known as the History Wars’ (3), then wider considerations come into force. In tackling this topic Jo Jones raises many questions and refrains from answering all of them. This is an excellent thing in an academic text.' (Introduction)
'Jo Jones’s Falling Backwards is balanced on the notion that “Some stories are hard to tell.” The question of how best to engage with this trauma—how to look back, openly and sensitively, into the darkness of Australia’s colonial past—is at the heart of her volume. The titular image of falling backwards gestures towards this work’s primary insight. Falling is usually an involuntary act. Yet, in acknowledging that we must tumble loose from our present assumptions, we might open ourselves up to a productive disorientation. This process allows ideas about self and other, belonging and identity, to shift and emerge anew. Ultimately, Falling Backwards is a thoughtful analysis of the politics of literary form in contemporary historical fiction. Jones does not object to realism per se, but to the ethical compromises that can occur when this classically linear, unified and self-affirming mode is applied to the representation of a positivistically unknowable past. ' (Introduction)
'Jo Jones’s Falling Backwards is balanced on the notion that “Some stories are hard to tell.” The question of how best to engage with this trauma—how to look back, openly and sensitively, into the darkness of Australia’s colonial past—is at the heart of her volume. The titular image of falling backwards gestures towards this work’s primary insight. Falling is usually an involuntary act. Yet, in acknowledging that we must tumble loose from our present assumptions, we might open ourselves up to a productive disorientation. This process allows ideas about self and other, belonging and identity, to shift and emerge anew. Ultimately, Falling Backwards is a thoughtful analysis of the politics of literary form in contemporary historical fiction. Jones does not object to realism per se, but to the ethical compromises that can occur when this classically linear, unified and self-affirming mode is applied to the representation of a positivistically unknowable past. ' (Introduction)
'The vexed question of what distinguishes historical novels from other genres has yet to be resolved. From the time of Homer, and looking forward to the more complex treatment of history by postmodern and post-postmodern novels, many definitions have been offered. None has completely satisfied. When the history in question is a significant event such as the Holocaust or, in the case of Falling Backwards: Australian Historical Fiction and the History Wars, ‘cultural and political significance … of the period known as the History Wars’ (3), then wider considerations come into force. In tackling this topic Jo Jones raises many questions and refrains from answering all of them. This is an excellent thing in an academic text.' (Introduction)
'‘Some stories are hard to tell’, says the blurb of Jo Jones’ recent book on fiction and the history wars. For a debate that swirls around the limits of history and fiction to get at ‘the truth’, this statement is perhaps truest of all. While the history wars have been characterised by politicised contests over the past, arguing over terminology such as ‘invasion’ and ‘settlement’, ‘commemoration’ and ‘celebration’, it was the contest over ‘history’ and ‘fiction’ that caught historians and fiction writers off-guard. When the novelist Kate Grenville suggested that her book, The Secret River, was able to straddle the polarisation of the history wars because fiction can come to history from the perspective of empathy and imagination, several historians bristled. Rather than being bound by contests over evidence and interpretation, a ‘novelist can stand up on a stepladder and look down at this, outside the fray, and say there is another way to understand this’, Grenville insisted. In response, historians such as Mark McKenna and Inga Clendinnen refused to accept that disciplinary history might be less equipped to understand or interpret the past.' (Introduction)
'I was about to begin writing this review when I read an article by Grace Karskens in the latest Griffith Review, concerning a visit she recently made to Dyarubbin (aka the Hawkesbury River) in the company of three Darug women and the historian/archaeologist Paul Irish. Together they are uncovering the Aboriginal history of the early settlers’ farms that flank the river – a hidden history that runs in parallel (and sometimes conflicts) with the well-known pioneer history of this country. The name of their project, ‘The Real Secret River: Dyarubbin’, instantly brings to mind Kate Grenville’s award-winning novel, which of course is set on the Hawkesbury.' (Introduction)
