Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction:
The Historian
The story of the publishing of this book is almost as interesting as the book itself. It’s a first novel. It’s 5,000 pages long. It’s a sweeping historian’s look at Dracula – wrapped up in a personal story about a father and daughter. It’s a murder-mystery. But it’s also a grand tour through the old stomping grounds of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires in the dying days of the Cold War. It’s almost like Elizabeth Kostova (the author) followed in the footsteps of the great Rebecca West, in her journey – going to Hungary, Romania, all those places – but not now, not after the breakup of Yugoslavia – but while they were still Communist countries, suffering behind a wall of misinformation. That’s the main reason I read the book – because, as I’ve said many times, I’m not into popular fiction – it takes a lot for me to pick up a current bestseller – there has to be some “hook” for me, and that, for me, was the hook. Elizabeth Kostova got an eye-popping advance for this book – she was still a graduate student at the University of Michigan when all of this happened. It’s the kind of thing that writers dream about. It’s like what happened to Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s script Good Will Hunting which is a good script – it’s fine – but for various and sundry reasons – a bidding war commenced over the script, and the price went higher and higher – and Gus van Sant got involved – and then Robin Williams signed on – and suddenly it was the most high-profile project in Hollywood. That almost NEVER happens, and it was a series of events that brought it into that situation – not just one thing, but a convergence. You seriously cannot plan for something like that. If it happens to you? Just count your blessings and take FULL ADVANTAGE of the moment because it probably will not come again. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are, as far as I’m concerned, two of the smartest people in Hollywood – because of how they spun that situation, and used it to their advantage. They totally could have been a one-shot success. That could have been IT for them. And no, they did not go on to write more scripts – it was a means to an end for them … but they USED that shining moment when everything went their way, and have obviously gone on to even greater success. That’s what happened to Elizabeth Kostova – and whether or not she parlays that first extraordinary success (I mean, advance word of the book had reached my ears almost a year before it was even published – because the advance she got was so attention-getting) into a career as a writer has yet to be seen. It might be hard to top that first success. Who knows. The book is massive, exquisitely researched, and also a damn gripping melodrama about Count Dracula. I highly recommend it, if you’re into that sort of thing. I posted about it here. I had a lot of fun reading the book – mainly because that whole era – from the breakup of the Ottoman empire after World War I to the crackup of Yugoslavia = is an ongoing fascination for me. The Balkans, all of that. Here’s another post I wrote about The Historian – where I was able to utilize my extensive library to get a history of what she was talking about. The book was a lot of fun – if that kind of thing is “fun” for you.
I will say this: it’s not as deep as I am normally used to. The main narrator remains a total nonentity to me. She is not a character, she does not LIVE – none of the people actually LIVE, as far as I’m concerned. It’s a book about its story – more than the people in the story. And I know that’s a type of writing, many books are written that way – it just isn’t my thing, and normally books like that do not keep my interest. Once I stopped looking for a character, in the normal definition of the word, and succumbed to the PLOT, I enjoyed The Historian much more. And by the end, I actually found it quite moving. Because yeah, we all know about vampires, and Dracula – we all have the image in our head of such things. But to contemplate such a situation for real – and what agony it must be … you go beyond the pale, you must live in darkness and silence, you are no longer human … that’s what this book ends up doing. And because it’s about relationships – father/daughter, etc. – it’s quite sad, by the end – because it’s really all about loss. And walking away, and letting go.
The book peels itself back like an onion. Because the lead narrator is trying to put together a mystery – she is “the historian”. The one going back into the past, looking for clues .. about Vlad Dracula … it takes her on a journey through Europe and Turkey … and there are times when it is QUITE terrifying. You seriously want to look over your shoulder as you are reading the book to make sure that a vampire is not standing there, waiting for you. Kostova’s a very good writer.
Again, it’s not really my TASTE – but her eye for details (you really feel like you are in those dusty Communist-era cafes in Budapest, etc.) is quite good. I can see why a bidding war would happen over this book.
Here’s an excerpt. (The book is made up of long letters from the father to the daughter – the letters sometimes go on for entire chapters – and sometimes the father shares letters HE receives – so you lose track of the present, you just go deeper and deeper into this investigation. So this excerpt is from one of the letters that the father received.)
EXCERPT FROM The Historian
My dear friend,
My driver was indeed able to take us north to Targoviste today, after which he returned to his family in Bucarest, and we have settled for the night in an old inn. Georgescu is an excellent travelling companion; along the way he regaled me with the history of the countryside we were passing through. His knowledge is very broad and his interests extend to local architecture and botany, so that I was able to learn a tremendous amount today.
Targoviste is a beautiful town, mediaeval still in character and containing at least this one good inn where a traveller can wash his face in clean water. We are now in the heart of Wallachia, in a hilly country between mountains and plain. Vlad Dracula ruled Wallachia several times during the 1450s and ’60s. Targoviste was his capital, and this afternoon we walked around the substantial ruins of his palace here, Georgescu pointing out to me the different chambers and describing their probable uses. Dracula was not born here but in Transylvania, in a town called Sighisoara. I won’t have time to see it, but Georgescu has been there several times, and he told me that the house in which Dracula’s father lived – Vlad’s birthplace – still stands.
The most remarkable of many remarkable sights we saw here today, as we prowled the old streets and ruins, was Dracula’s watchtower, or rather a handsome restoration of it done in the nineteenth century. Georgescu, like a good archaeologist, turns up his Scotch-Romany nose at restorations, explaining that in this case the crenellations around the top aren’t quite right; but what can you expect, he asked me tartly, when historians begin using their imaginations? Whether or not the restoration is quite accurate, what Georgescu told me about that tower gave me a shiver. It was used by Vlad Dracula not only as a lookout in that era of frequent Turkish invasions but also as a vantage point from which to view the impalements that were carried out in the court below.
We took our evening meal in a little pub near the center of town. From there we could see the outer walls of the ruined palace, and as we ate our bread and stew, Georgescu told me that Targoviste is a most apt place from which to travel to Dracula’s mountain fortress. “The second time he captured the Wallachian throne, in 1456,” he explained, ” he decided to build a castle above the Arges to which he could escape invasions from the plain. The mountains between Targoviste and Transylvania – and the wilds of Transylvania itself – have always been a place of escape for the Wallachians.”
He broke a piece of bread for himself and mopped up his stew with it, smiling. “Dracula knew there were already a couple of ruined fortresses, dating at least as far back as the eleventh century, above the river. He decided to rebuild one of them, the ancient Castle Arges. He needed cheap labour – don’t these things always come doon to having good help? So in his usual kindhearted way he invited all his boyars – his lairds, you know, to a little Easter celebration. They came in their best clothes to that big courtyard right here in Targoviste, and he gave them a great deal of food and drink. Then he killed off the ones he found most inconvenient, and marched the rest of them – and their wives and little ones – fifty kilometers up into the mountains to rebuild Castle Arges.”
Georgescu hunted around the table, apparently for another piece of bread. “Well, it’s moore complicated than that, actually – Roumanian history always is. Dracula’s older brother Mircea had been murthered years before by their political enemies in Targoviste. When Dracula came to power he had his brother’s coffin doog up and found that the pooor man had been buried alive. That was when he sent out his Easter invitation, and the results gave him revenge for his brother as well as cheap labour to build his castle in the mountains. He had brick kilns built up near the original fortress, and anyone who’d survived the journey was forced to work night and day, carrying bricks and building the walls and towers. The auld songs from this region say that the boyars’ fine clothes fell off them in rags before they were down.” Georgescu scraped at his bowl. “I’ve noticed Dracula was often as practical a fellow as he was a nasty one.”
So tomorrow, my friend, we will set out on the trail of those unfortunate nobles, but by wagon, where they toiled into the mountains on foot.
It is remarkable to see the peasants walking around in their native costumes among the more modern dress of the townspeople. The men wear white shirts with dark vests and tremendous leather slippers laced up to the knee with leather thongs, for all the world like Roman shepherds come back to life. The women, who are mainly dark like the men and often quite handsome, wear heavy skirts and blouses with a vest tightly fastened over everything, and their clothing is embroidered with rich designs. They seem a lively folk, laughing and shouting over the business of bargaining in the marketplace, which I visited yesterday morning when I first arrived.
Less than ever do I have a way to mail this, so for now I shall keep it tucked safely in my bad.
Yours truly,
Bartholomew
I read this the same week my whole family got together for a week or so while my sister got married. It’s an odd association to have, but it was the first time my mom’s and dad’s sides of the family got together for an extended amount of time.
And I associate this book with that week. I think of that time, what should just be a hot summer week in the mountains of Tennessee, and I instead tend to think of a trip through Eastern Europe, as you say….
Tommy – I love how that happens sometimes – certain books become irrevocably wound up in the situation in which you read them. Wild how that happens!
Good book – I’ll be interested to see what she comes up with next. It’s kind of a hard act to follow!
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