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why you should be reading history (and footnotes)

The best ideas for stories and characters come out of footnotes. In a NYT article about Karen Joy Fowler (who wrote The Jane Austen Book Club, which is on the best seller list just now), this bit about her first novel:

"Sarah Canary," her first novel, came about after one of her editors suggested she try the novel form. In a three-volume history of Tacoma, Wash., she discovered a paragraph about a 19th-century Chinese man hired to execute an Indian convicted of murder. It formed the basis for "Sarah Canary," published in 1991.

History is written from the perspective of the victors (Winston Churchill said, "History will be good to me, for I intend to write it."), but the interesting, revealing stuff sneaks in around the edges.

June 14, 2004 08:15 AM

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