Wow, thank you. Looking forward to our real-life human-voice chat. I suspect I have a lot to learn from you yet.
Also re: histfic recommendations, I purposefully avoided reading too much in the genre lest I start copying too many tropes, BUT HHhH (Laurent Binet), a historical metafiction, is kind of the book that gave me permission to write *The Requisitions* the way I did
I'll have to check it out! WWII books especially are pretty oversaturated, there's a lottttt of stuff tom clancy adjacent that are about the *tough voice* "trials and tribulations of our good ole boys" buttttttt there's some really crazy writing on the war as the metal pivot by which our modern world was formed.
Idk but if you're down for it Vollman's Europe Central is insane and incredibly illuminative of how the modern world was created, the looming monster we're still in the shadow of of, that great big communication network, that big ole net, how it first descended on the world and what happened.
It was definitely one of the challenging realities of this book, figuring out a way to write it that felt true to me and not to the genre, which is why the metafictional angle helped (+ setting it in a place in Poland very few people have ever heard about). I like to think that while WWII is the setting, it's not really *about* the war in the traditional sense, and more about how people confront or succumb to systems of oppression (or, often, do both). Vollman's book has been on my list for ages, thanks for the reminder (one of the reasons I rarely really read historical fiction before writing *The Requisitions* is I didn't want to write just another cliché)
Absolutely -- that reductive "good ole boys" angle is what deters me from the genre as a whole, and I found your expression of life in war to be very fresh and engaging. I'll have to look into Vollman, hoping to break into that genre a bit more & sharpen my history game.
Wow, thank you. Looking forward to our real-life human-voice chat. I suspect I have a lot to learn from you yet.
Also re: histfic recommendations, I purposefully avoided reading too much in the genre lest I start copying too many tropes, BUT HHhH (Laurent Binet), a historical metafiction, is kind of the book that gave me permission to write *The Requisitions* the way I did
This was so fabulous thank you for taking so much time and thought. You really got the essence of the book, bravo and thank you.
I'll have to check it out! WWII books especially are pretty oversaturated, there's a lottttt of stuff tom clancy adjacent that are about the *tough voice* "trials and tribulations of our good ole boys" buttttttt there's some really crazy writing on the war as the metal pivot by which our modern world was formed.
Idk but if you're down for it Vollman's Europe Central is insane and incredibly illuminative of how the modern world was created, the looming monster we're still in the shadow of of, that great big communication network, that big ole net, how it first descended on the world and what happened.
It was definitely one of the challenging realities of this book, figuring out a way to write it that felt true to me and not to the genre, which is why the metafictional angle helped (+ setting it in a place in Poland very few people have ever heard about). I like to think that while WWII is the setting, it's not really *about* the war in the traditional sense, and more about how people confront or succumb to systems of oppression (or, often, do both). Vollman's book has been on my list for ages, thanks for the reminder (one of the reasons I rarely really read historical fiction before writing *The Requisitions* is I didn't want to write just another cliché)
Absolutely -- that reductive "good ole boys" angle is what deters me from the genre as a whole, and I found your expression of life in war to be very fresh and engaging. I'll have to look into Vollman, hoping to break into that genre a bit more & sharpen my history game.