2024/01/01 by Joe Moran · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Irish and British Studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/hwj/dbae019
openalex publication_date 2024/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
In his essay ‘Inventories and Undoings’, the short-story writer Charles Baxter argues that ‘something in the nature of fiction loves inventories and lists’. One of fiction’s mysterious pleasures, he writes, is how particularized information so readily brings characters to life. Simple, cumulative details – about how they look and sound, their belongings and the objects that surround them, the settings they inhabit – can encapsulate ‘one person’s being-on-earth’. Specificity makes things real. ‘She likes chocolate’ is less persuasive than ‘The only chocolate she will eat is imported from Mozambique.’ A subjective claim such as ‘she is brave’ will eventually have to be substantiated; an invented fact becomes ‘imaginatively true, as long as it doesn’t contradict the logic of the story’. Inventories build a world instantly and irrevocably. ‘If you don’t like amassing this bargeload of material,’ Baxter cautions, ‘you may not be comfortable with fiction itself, or at least realist fiction, which has a tendency to fill up the page with accretive details.’1 Historians are warier of such inventories. J. H. Plumb’s dismissal of Lewis Namier as ‘lost in a Sargasso sea of detail’ comes to mind.2 It is true that many scholars of microhistory and ‘history from below’ cast a wide evidential net, accumulating small details from ephemeral sources to build up a composite picture – what Anna Davin calls ‘the jigsaw strategy’.3 Generally, though, the ‘so what?’ question still has to be asked. What is this information for and how is it being deployed as evidence to support an argument about the past? And yet I must admit that I often feel the urge to suspend this ‘so what?’ question and fill up the page with details. Details, even when they seem incidental or superfluous, have an adamant exactitude that anchors something (a person, an event, a milieu) in time and space. They can also form an argument in themselves, even if it is just that these things matter and should be noted. The writerly act of singling out a detail from the world’s infinite database itself stakes a claim about what is worth noticing. Historians are trained to value an evidenced argument over ‘mere’ description. But sometimes, as Wallace Stevens put it, ‘description is revelation’.4 This interest in what Baxter calls ‘accretive details’ typifies the burgeoning genre of ‘speculative biography’. Speculative biographers seek to redress imbalances in the historical record by writing more imaginatively about those with poorly documented, barely remembered lives. Recent examples include Matt Houlbrook’s Prince of Tricksters, his account of the life of the interwar conman Netley Lucas; Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five, about the women murdered by Jack the Ripper; Julia Laite’s The Disappearance of Lydia Harvey, about a young New Zealand woman trafficked into prostitution in Edwardian London; and Anna Funder’s Wifedom, about George Orwell’s first wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy. All combine painstaking research with what Natalie Zemon Davis, in her pioneering work of speculative biography, The Return of Martin Guerre, calls ‘informed imagination’.5 They flesh out, extrapolate from and hazard guesses about the extant details, sketching in the wider picture without ever suggesting that it can be painted in its entirety. Rubenhold’s and Laite’s books are the to the historical They and and to their and and for to his work in the that a with is like to in the a of a his with such as a the out of of from the of a about and a to his has the least to is from Eileen to an in she in up her – a of and and that of Orwell’s have to in this as a to Orwell’s of to an or out In these of Eileen is in matter that can only be by its the that is of her are details, which calls of up like a – a the of a a the speculative is more than just about in in the record as It also a to by This is to It the of I his life and I have to what these speculative have about the of detail more deployed in fiction to the and of a the in the its true to the of a the it that be into of and I have the for of what it to this of an life by the and of the I to the that is to than a – that this a as and as A is in the of his in like many of his and and with in and so that can This is In is still a of the small that have in the the the even a 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All I is that in for a and the of small with of of The that life as in the of detail to to an to a the calls this the and the he writes, is detail that itself and to that with a of detail that with its in the and comes to seem details of life have so in that they as be or even of how by the of are as in the from to The more often are the more these are seem more the more these in are the of to in and to be of In the of a at his the as the with the the the the of being the of as to The the has an at his is the details I can of should be A is the that a and can But by must have about his of he an at least not a trained that as a of the that his to when he in to that his an the in the about the their and about the that has at the of the put the he and his They are still for the of and a has that that the often of the of details from the of how the of the world is to The in the is in from with that to a In the it is to the the is in the and in its at the of the It is an from the – even for his for such a he will this for the of his life. is more detail from that at as the is into the a small of the have up about and their the of comes up to and They are the that has with for of the he has in In to The as Charles Baxter the in and in detail they In an when in the and he these about to comes from is a is and is of the world to of the to as it into the The of that the the the things the This also the historical the in the for it as ‘the in the and ‘the when the the and the he writes, the that it – and the in account of that is and and the first of and the as for it being the by such as and the and into a world of – it or In the have have and have such of evidence in the of and All ‘the of in such with their to the of the is the of which to in of persuasive of or They urge to the of and the of in of They like with in time and with wider and the of work and in these But they also that such have an infinite that to and In this world of is in for a the to with a he can into ‘If I from and you to can the is also a with a up for his from he can his like even to argues that fiction this to it is with details that to A of what calls detail’ to the like a for to – life also a details is a of the is of and and it, But writing to details in writing are by the they that the life to those details is of They the seem and the to the world in the of in of that of in he the world have to the of of in But that not just to the or the like for up in the for and to his as it in in It to these and without in the to account for this of being more than ‘If a life is not writes, is not a In these of what of a and it not to One even as have as the of a he the in less from by the and by the by which time the in the and in the by the in and by their They to be more The an only the of the this have what he the of the and the it the from the a of and The for a at the in of for of its that the in the In the and its The at and to the of and in that to They in the to a with the to about to The the to a the and of a that its these as as I can even in the And just over the over the settings of his life. In when I first I to that I to a What the of this I have to with