Jonathan Marshall
asked
B.K. Duncan:
Would you have liked to have lived in the time when your stories are set?
B.K. Duncan
Great question: mainly because I don't have a cut-and-dried answer to hand. But I’ll explore as I go . . .
I've always been entranced by 1920’s architecture, culture, films, music, modes of transport, Art Deco ceramics, clothes, and bright, brash advertising ephemera. But would I have appreciated it in the same way if I’d lived with it day by day? It takes the distance of time to engender nostalgia – witness the recent explosion of love for all things from the 70s and 80s, much of which we thought horrendous at the time.
If I was transported back to 1920 I’d want to be rich rather than poor; healthy so that I wasn't subjected to pre National Health Service medical care; independent and educated – which, given the social limitations of the age, probably means I’d want to be a man. Only that, of course, brings in the reality of the Great War. Surviving it would have damaged me in some way physically, psychological or emotionally. And here we get to the nub of the issue. There’s a huge part of me that would like to know how I would have coped. What it must've been like to face a future that had been irrevocably altered by a cataclysmic event, the ramifications of which we, with our current sensibilities, can’t possibly comprehend. Because although there are wars and conflicts going on in the world as I write this, the prevalence of rolling news and front-line reportage influences our responses to them even as they happen. Instead of information, Britain in 1920 was flooded with a sort of collective amnesia which distanced individuals from each other and their experiences, and worked to deny on-going suffering. Wilfred Owen wrote his poems of remembrance to awaken his contemporaries. And, 100 years on, they pierce me something shockingly close to envy. Because I’ll never be able to test myself against whether I’d have been brave enough to be a lone voice shouting the truth. So I have to do the next best thing and honour the people who did do so in my fiction.
So, on balance . . . no . . . and . . . yes.
I did warn you it would be complicated!
Great question: mainly because I don't have a cut-and-dried answer to hand. But I’ll explore as I go . . .
I've always been entranced by 1920’s architecture, culture, films, music, modes of transport, Art Deco ceramics, clothes, and bright, brash advertising ephemera. But would I have appreciated it in the same way if I’d lived with it day by day? It takes the distance of time to engender nostalgia – witness the recent explosion of love for all things from the 70s and 80s, much of which we thought horrendous at the time.
If I was transported back to 1920 I’d want to be rich rather than poor; healthy so that I wasn't subjected to pre National Health Service medical care; independent and educated – which, given the social limitations of the age, probably means I’d want to be a man. Only that, of course, brings in the reality of the Great War. Surviving it would have damaged me in some way physically, psychological or emotionally. And here we get to the nub of the issue. There’s a huge part of me that would like to know how I would have coped. What it must've been like to face a future that had been irrevocably altered by a cataclysmic event, the ramifications of which we, with our current sensibilities, can’t possibly comprehend. Because although there are wars and conflicts going on in the world as I write this, the prevalence of rolling news and front-line reportage influences our responses to them even as they happen. Instead of information, Britain in 1920 was flooded with a sort of collective amnesia which distanced individuals from each other and their experiences, and worked to deny on-going suffering. Wilfred Owen wrote his poems of remembrance to awaken his contemporaries. And, 100 years on, they pierce me something shockingly close to envy. Because I’ll never be able to test myself against whether I’d have been brave enough to be a lone voice shouting the truth. So I have to do the next best thing and honour the people who did do so in my fiction.
So, on balance . . . no . . . and . . . yes.
I did warn you it would be complicated!
More Answered Questions
A Goodreads user
asked
B.K. Duncan:
Hi B.K. I just wanted to say congratulations on becoming a Summer finalist in the People's Book Prize Awards! Good luck for the finals next May, and I hope everybody remembers to vote again 15 May 2016 -26/27? May 2016.( I hope I've got that right?) All the best Christine Ward
Christine
asked
B.K. Duncan:
I'm interested you didn't mention F. Scott Fitzgerald among your influences. I associate him with the 1920s, although the worlds of The Great Gatsby and Foul Trade are very different. There are glimmers in FT of another, more glamorous life, that somehow evades May. Was class still a big issue in the UK in the 20s? Was the war not a great leveler? Would May's life have been easier had she lived in the US?
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