osprey_archer: (Default)
osprey_archer ([personal profile] osprey_archer) wrote2021-09-21 04:48 pm
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Historical Notes

I've been wistful about the fact that I didn't include historical notes when I published The Threefold Tie and Honeytrap, and it has occurred to me that since I will need to update their backmatter ANYWAY to include links to The Larks Still Bravely Singing, I could definitely rectify this mistake by writing those now and bunging them into the ebook files.

OTOH, I am not sure the world is Ready for a historical note for The Threefold Tie which is 50% facts about the sexual mores of 19th century American utopian experiments (do you KNOW how much information about the Oneida Community I had to cut out of the infodump scene? Do you KNOW), 50% William Dean Howells books, and 0% 19th century American attitudes about queerness because I definitely did not research that at all for this book. Although now that I HAVE done some research on it, I don't think I did too badly, so I guess I did a REALLY good job extrapolating from the snippets of Anthony Rotundo's "Romantic Friendship: Male Intimacy and Middle-Class Youth in the Northern United States, 1800-1900" that George Chauncey quotes in Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940.

Also for Honeytrap I have about twenty sources about the Soviet Union and, like, two books about the US. I feel that the distribution should perhaps be less uneven and also, perhaps, that is too many sources for one historical note. But they are all so good! How could I cut any more of them! I already sacrificed the gulag memoirs (waffling about whether to add a few back in; I really feel some of the stuff about fatalism illuminates Gennady's character, even though he was never in a gulag) and the Soviet movies. Surely that's as much as anyone can ask.
oracne: turtle (Default)

[personal profile] oracne 2021-09-21 10:21 pm (UTC)(link)
It sounds geektastic!
sovay: (Rotwang)

[personal profile] sovay 2021-09-21 10:27 pm (UTC)(link)
OTOH, I am not sure the world is Ready for a historical note for The Threefold Tie which is 50% facts about the sexual mores of 19th century American utopian experiments (do you KNOW how much information about the Oneida Community I had to cut out of the infodump scene? Do you KNOW)

I always enjoy that sort of thing, personally.
thawrecka: (Default)

[personal profile] thawrecka 2021-09-22 12:29 am (UTC)(link)
I always enjoy author end-notes about all the cool research they did.
aurumcalendula: gold, blue, orange, and purple shapes on a black background (Default)

[personal profile] aurumcalendula 2021-09-22 01:44 am (UTC)(link)
I love reading historical notes!
kore: (Default)

[personal profile] kore 2021-09-22 02:45 am (UTC)(link)
I would love notes for both those books!
potofsoup: (Default)

[personal profile] potofsoup 2021-09-22 06:47 am (UTC)(link)
okay ngl I would be one of those people who'd just want the historical notes.
lauradi7dw: me wearing a straw hat and gray mask (anniversary)

WDH

[personal profile] lauradi7dw 2021-09-22 11:37 am (UTC)(link)
I hadn't really thought about William Dean Howells in the decades since we had to read "Silas Lapham" in high school, but the wikipedia entries are interesting, and now I at a minimum want to learn more about Elinor Mead Howells.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Dean_Howells_House_(Cambridge,_Massachusetts)