On the River walk at Providence, next to Rhode Island School of Design, a thrilling place. Selfie: yours truly.
I am typing this on my phone as I chose to travel light. I can’t afford carrying heavy luggage around, that’s all I would say.
I am at the Business History Conference in Providence, Rhode Island, staying in the middle of the wonderful chaos of Brown University, and walking to the conference venue in under twenty minutes. The venue is historical and so is the city, and we historians gather once a year to come together and discuss the latest in the field, challenges and opportunities, at this leading conferences for business historians around the world. I am presenting my paper this year, and am the proud recipient of the Alfred Chandler grant for the same.
So the workshop moderated by Prof. Andrew Popp from the Copenhagen Business School was enriching. I am increasingly becoming enamoured by his work, given that he is striving to bring everything I care about at the front and centre of an academic discipline that is still debating the relevance of creative writing for historians - emotions, literature, good writing. Throughout the workshop, hearing other historians talk about fiction and its relevance or irrelevance for historians, my brain kept firing but I held myself back with notes to blog about this later.
I would limit my thoughts to the discussion on creative writing (one scholar said they find creative writing difficult), whether fiction is important, and how history can reach a wider audience.
I am an emerging scholar of business history, but I have a literary practice, and specialist skills in narrative, long form journalism. My reflections on each of the points that interested me in the session are based on my several years of writing across genres, and as someone who thinks narrative writing is an intense form of writing, which – when combined with historical facts – has the power to be the most potent form of storytelling. I do not have to go far in citing writers who have accomplished that. Rather than all the names suggested in the workshop, I would be quick to chant in deep devotion of historian Amitav Ghosh’s work. His writing, imaginative gift as a historian, and his mastery of history has few parallels. For reference, just go through his Ibis trilogy if you haven’t already. Thrilling work that showcases his brilliance as both a historian and a novelist. A global bestseller.
Last year, writing for Irish literary magazine ‘Abridged’, I wrote a poem ‘How to get to heaven’. While writing that poem, I tried to imagine what I would do if I were the victim of a gangrape. This reflection tied in with my research on Indian rape laws where often burden of proof and blame often falls on women. Court judgements in the past have been especially brutal, even questioning why women wouldn’t report rape or resist or make noise while the violence is committed. As a woman, it dawned on me that I might want to live and might just go through the ordeal just so the violators spare me my life, given that rapists often brutally kill their victims. My poem ended with this sentence: “Do whatever, just don’t kill me”.
Just a few days ago, a foreign tourist was gangraped in India and she got on camera to say that she was glad that in spite of the ordeal, she was at least alive.
Now think of the coincidence between me imagining a scenario in my poem and the real life statement from a gangrape survivor. Consider the possibility that fiction, however imagined, could be a version of truth or history being made. Think about it. Fiction writers don’t just make up fiction; and there is an entire field of literature that studies life writing, literature inspired by life, or fiction as a mirror of contemporary life. David Rudner used fiction in his seminal work on the Chettairs, and it remains till date the best paper in business history I have read, but that’s just my view and taste.
Now, I move on to the longread (journalistic piece of work with strong narratives and rigorous reportage) I wrote on an acid attack survivor in Delhi. After spending nearly a month following her between home and hospital in the midst of her facial reconstruction surgeries, I learnt that Sonali, the survivor, experienced changes in weather more acutely than others because of changes on the upper layer of her skin. She told me, I feel colder than others and I am very sensitive even to the milder changes in the intensity of sunlight. I began the article with this: “Sonali xx lives in a world of difficult extremes.” Now consider plain truth telling or interpretation of truth that historians may find themselves obsessed with, and this would become – “Sonali feels colder than others and hotter when the sun is harsh.” Or some version closer to this. In journalism, the gap in creativity makes or breaks readership for a story. It’s therefore rather strange that historians debate if creativity or creative writing must be practised in history or not!
I read Marc Flandreau’s beautiful work ‘Anthropologists in the stock exchange’ and a sentence stayed with me. He says history must be rescued as a genuine form of writing, and I wholeheartedly agree.
Now on to historical storytelling and why that’s needed. Business history is niche but fascinating. I chose to write for a publisher with wider readership a book that’s based on a small part of my thesis, simply because the complex concepts thrown around finance need to be simplified and connected intimately to the needs of a reader – is it education, awareness, or pure love for stories, or all three? I think a work of history should be all three, and therein lies the challenge of combining creative writing with history.
It’s my personal view that historians have a responsibility. When historians write for each other, they fail the millions of those who want history served in interesting, consumable formats. Just as historians owe it to students in classrooms, I believe there is a wider readership historians must care about, for purely two reasons, and these are not about self promotion or diluting the intensity of scholarly work. I believe historians owe it to readers who love history; to policy makers who need to understand the past to make better policy decisions; and to those who don’t care about history because they find it boring (?) but strong chance is, this could change if historical writing changes. This will not just inform and educate; rather, I don’t see a better way to draw more business historians in the field than talk about it in a way that sets imaginations rolling.
What historians then need is first, empathy – to put themselves in the place of their readers and imagine how they would like to be told a story you as a historian care about, and second, to really imagine the past creatively, and devise a language that is both urgent, rigorous and compelling.
To that person who said creative writing is difficult, I say, thank you 🙂.
With love from Providence,
Yours always,
P.