Truisms

I’ve been reading Imperium, by Robert Harris, a novel about the life of Cicero. It seems to cover the middle part of the great advocate’s career, from the prosecution of Gaius Verres to the conspiracy of Catalina. It leaves out Cicero’s rocky relationship with the First Triumvirate and his tutelage of Octavius, who later had him killed. And it leaves out the case that made his fame and proved his courage, his defense of Sextus Roscius during the dictatorship of Sulla.

It’s an okay novel. It follows the history very closely, and if you’re interested in that sort of thing, you’ll be interested in this. No great insights are obtained. It makes Cicero out to be a friend of the common man and a champion of democracy, which I rather much doubt, but does nothing that can’t be supported by the available facts and/or the convenience of drama.

What I note, however, is that the book is written in the first person by Cicero’s slave/secretary and real-life biographer, Tiro. (The fellow who invented shorthand, by the way.) The great man, as we see him in this book, is the invention of his sidekick, as Sherlock Holmes is (as we read him) the invention of Watson.

I mention this because some years ago I was trying to sell a novel about Benjamin Franklin, something that I utterly failed to do. Most editors didn’t even bother to return my agent’s phone calls, and thus I have no idea why the work met with such utter indifference. (Most didn’t even bother to reject it— I suppose it’s still officially on submission in half a dozen places.) But the one kind editor who actually did talk to me gave a long list of reasons why the book wouldn’t work for him, mostly having to do with the book’s failure to fit convincingly into one category or another. (The editor who talked to me was promptly fired. I hope these events are not connected.)

The reason that didn’t have to do with category went something like this: “Your book is written from the point of view of a famous historical character. Readers are intimidated by the thought of having to enter the mind of a genius, and so would be much more comfortable viewing Franklin from the point of view of a more ordinary person.” From the point of view of a Watson, in other words. The Alienist was given as an example, a novel which featured Theodore Roosevelt pursuing a serial killer but which was written from the point of view of a fictional college chum. (He could also have mentioned all of Gore Vidal’s historicals, none of which are written from the point of view of the title character.)

Franklin wrote his own puffery and had no need of a Watson, and I felt uncomfortable inventing an ahistorical character in a book wherein every other character actually existed, and so never followed the editor’s advice. Franklin was such a protean character that I very much enjoyed the challenge of writing from his point of view. (I also never mentioned that I didn’t think The Alienist was a particularly good novel, for all that it was scrupulously researched.)

If I’d had my wits about me I would have mentioned Margaret George, who has written fictional autobiographies of Henry VIII, Cleopatra, Mary Magdalene, and Helen of Troy, all of which seem to have sold briskly. Also I, Claudius, as well as Robert Graves’ other historicals about Belisarius and Jason. (By the way, have I mentioned that the Spanish translation of the Claudius novel is Yo, Claudio?)

So the truism about readers being uncomfortable reading something from the point of view of a famous character is pretty much untrue.

As writers, we’re often told one thing or another about the publishing business that later turns out to be, umm, premature.

Any other examples?