Books, Arts & Manners: How Much Literary License?

The recent appearance of William Styron’s Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond raises the question I posed originally in these pages when reviewing Bernard Malamud’s The Fixer (NR, Nov. 1, 1966). Then, I asked how much literary license should be permitted the author to recreate from his imagination the life of a historical figure, especially one not too deeply buried in the dust

of antiquity? It will be recalled that Malamud took the very real Mendel Beilis and turned him into a creature he never was. To top it off, and in order to heighten the drama, he contrived tortures and sexual fantasies that would have brought a blush to the cheeks of Ilse Koch. But Malamud was lucky. Not too many critics knew who Mendel Beilis was, even if the book jacket did mention his name, while others were only too ready to be impressed with the novel’s recourse to a kind of sex-cumviolence that assured it an uninterrupted climb to the top of the best-seller lists.

MG

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Max Geltman

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The recent appearance of William Styron’s Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond raises the question I posed originally in these pages when reviewing Bernard Malamud’s The Fixer (NR, Nov. 1, 1966). Then, I asked how much literary license should be permitted the author to recreate from his imagination the life of a historical figure, especially one not too deeply buried in the dust

of antiquity? It will be recalled that Malamud took the very real Mendel Beilis and turned him into a creature he never was. To top it off, and in order to heighten the drama, he contrived tortures and sexual fantasies that would have brought a blush to the cheeks of Ilse Koch. But Malamud was lucky. Not too many critics knew who Mendel Beilis was, even if the book jacket did mention his name, while others were only too ready to be impressed with the novel’s recourse to a kind of sex-cumviolence that assured it an uninterrupted climb to the top of the best-seller lists.