Alden Carter Responds:
 

As I indicated in the review, Mr. Carter very courteously discussed my reaction to his novel prior to my posting it on the 33rd's website.  It should be noted that Mr. Carter insisted that I express my honest reaction to the book in the review.  After the review was posted, he sent the following response which contains a far more able explanation of his aims and motivations than anything I could write, and is posted with his permission.

Dear Gary:

Thanks for taking the time to read and review Bright Starry Banner. Thanks also for the compliments regarding my story-telling ability and my courtesy.  As a practice, I do not respond to reviews, but our exchange has been so pleasant and honest that I'm going to make an exception this time.  I regret that some of the literary license I used in describing the battle of Murfreesboro offended you.   However, let me offer a few justifications--or at least reasons--for my decisions.

Literary license is as necessary a tool for a writer of fiction as a shoulder-arm is for an infantryman.  Historians can admit that there are holes in the historical record.  A novelist is expected to know the answers.  Hence the writer of historical fiction must fill out the record with suppositions as to how and why particular events happened or particular characters behaved as they did.  For example, during the approach to Murfreesboro on Dec. 29, Rosecrans was informed that the Confederates were evacuating the town while his commanders at the front knew that nothing of the sort was happening.  How did this happen?   The historical record is silent, but I'm a former Navy communications officer and the immediate reason that jumps to my mind is that someone screwed up the communications.  So that is the fictional explanation I provide.  It's supposition, but I think plausible supposition. 

At times, it is necessary to invent characters who may in one way or another typify the behavior of people in highly stressful circumstances.  An example is the character Zein, who occurred to me while reading of a similar bloodthirsty psychopath in, I think, Irvin Bell Willey’s The Life of Johnny Reb.  The rape Zein commits and the revenge inflicted on him by the victim’s friends is not from the historical record.  However, all things happen in war, and the Zeins, although uncommon, are part of the story of battle.

Regarding your specific objections to my use of literary license in characterizing certain prominent figures.  I think I'm on pretty firm ground re. Hardee's womanizing.  There are a number of references to it, including a few in the laudatory biography Old Reliable.  It's a flaw, but otherwise I find him quite an admirable character.

Re. Sill.  I also find him a sympathetic character.  Frankly, I think you make too much of my statement that he might appear at an opera with a handsome boy "on his arm" as easily as he might with an attractive young woman.   In the New York of the era, two "swells" might appear as a couple in public without necessarily leading observers to speculate that their attraction was sexual.  Do I imply that Sill may be bi-sexual?  I leave the possibility open.  But the point was to contrast the social whirl that Sill looks forward to in a peacetime New York with the hard life Sheridan can expect  "chasing Indians" as a soldier on the frontier once the war is over and the wartime ranks only a memory.

Re. Polk.  I confess that I did not find much to admire about the man in the process of hammering my way through the turgid biography Fighting Bishop.  I believe he was a killer.  Witness the shock of his staff officers when he suggested that they take potshots at Grant at Belmont--a point in the war when chivalry was still the accepted behavior.   The Cannes incident is supposition, indeed perhaps rank supposition, but something terribly disturbing did happen during his attempt to preach to the tough French sailors.   Derision doesn't seem enough, considering that the man was apparently incapacitated for some weeks thereafter.  I don’t find my supposition as to the cause entirely implausible.

Re. Polk’s spirituality.  One source called him "spiritually ambivalent," and I think there's considerable evidence to support that.  He certainly was not a particularly hardworking or learned clergyman as even Fighting Bishop acknowledges.  Moreover, he was a lousy field tactician and an obstreperous subordinate.  In the late afternoon of the first day's fighting at Stones River, Polk hurled brigade after brigade piecemeal against the Round Forest.  The squandering of so many fine soldiers was inexcusable, particularly since Bragg had ordered him to concentrate before attacking.   His incompetence outraged a number of his subordinates and can still outrage today.

Before passing on to other matters, let me ask a question.  How sane is Polk?  Obviously, not very as he is presented in my novel.  Is he a good man on the point of madness?  He is, after all, involved in something that is insane.  And that is one of the themes I am trying to explore.  Battle, particularly in this war it seems to me, is such an extraordinarily brutal experience that I think many , if not most, men must be driven to the limits of sanity and beyond.  Sometimes, I think even the fabric of reality itself must stretch so thin under the pressure of the cataclysm that the perception of what is real and unreal becomes next to impossible.  Hence, some of the weird things that Polk thinks or fantasizes.

As a group, I'm hard on generals.  Crittenden, McCook, and a number of others take their knocks.  Do I find many heroes among generals? Rarely.  Do I find them among the common soldiers?  Frequently.  And I guess that's part of our continued fascination with the Civil War and war in general: What sort of men can be so certain of themselves as to order thousands of men into combat where a number of them will be killed or maimed.  Even more fascinating, why do men obey?  What possesses them when we know that so much of what they are supposed to be fighting for becomes ephemeral when bullets fly?

Is there a general I admire?  Among the senior commanders at Stones River, I admire Thomas most, Hardee second.  I also have considerable sympathy for Rosecrans and Bragg.  For all their flaws as commanders, they appear to me to have been honest and sincere in their discharge of terrible responsibility.  How they compensated under the strain is part of the story.  In both cases, I think they were poorly served by key subordinates, particularly McCook and Polk.

On both large and small matters, I try to do my research thoroughly.    I go to considerable pains to get the details right.  I haven't gotten them all right.  It has already been pointed out to me that I mistakenly wrote rucksack for haversack on two occasions.  Mea culpa, I was careless.

To the difficult subject of what is or is not legitimate literary license in historical fiction.  It was an issue much talked about in the wake of E. L. Doctorow's Ragtime.  Personally, I thought it was a great novel despite its extreme use of literary license.  I believe that a covenant has to exist between writers and readers of fiction.   As writers, we try to entertain at the same time that we explore “the human condition.”  On their side, our readers have to accept that we are not writing history or a scientific text, but fiction where certain elements are going to emerge not from academic or scientific research by from the imagination alone.

My friend Gary Paulsen speaks of fiction as "enhanced truth."  At its best, I think fiction is exactly that: a craft that explores meaning sometimes at the expense of absolute, supportable fact.  An example.  Richard III was apparently not a bad guy as kings go and a pretty good ruler.  That fact does not invalidate the greatness of Shakespeare's play, however historically inaccurate it is.   A second example. We all know that much that is presented in western movies is hogwash. But some of the great westerns--The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid ; Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid; or Gunfight at OK Corral (I saw it seven times)--are great movies despite that. As readers and viewers, we have to take most western movies for what they are--works of fiction--and not uncritically accept them as a presentation of history.

As with western movies and fiction, a great deal of myth has grown up around the Civil War.  Indeed all history gathers barnacles of myth aplenty.  It is the historian's role to separate fact from myth or outright untruth.  As a novelist, I like to think that I explore not only truth but the myth itself.   I am bothered by the romantic presentation of so many of the historical characters in Civil War fiction.   I did not set out to write a book in that tradition.  Rather, I set out to try to imagine a battle and its participants in my own way.  I admit that my characters have a tendency toward less nobility, more flaws, and less grace under pressure than is commonplace in much Civil War fiction.  But I hope they are more real.  Have I been entirely correct in all my decisions?  Of course not.  But I've done the best I could over several years of intense work to try to penetrate some of the issues of heroism, cowardice, sanity and insanity (both personal and institutional), and--though I cringe at saying it--of myth and reality.   I hope the result, for whatever flaws it contains, deserves a reading.

I am grateful to the reenacting community for the valuable work reenactors do as living historians.  I'm also grateful for their careful study of the war's innumerable details.   If some of the academic historians went about the study of the war with similar high standards many of the poor historical books on the shelves would never have been written (or at least passed by doctoral committees). That elements of Bright Starry Banner may prove unpopular with some in the reenacting community is something I will deeply regret.  I only hope that the book's good points will more than counterbalance the bad even in the opinion of that demanding audience.

Again, my thanks for your careful reading of Bright Starry Banner.  I hope once the jolt of the "speed bumps" diminishes  that you will recall more to your liking and more to recommend.

With all best wishes,

Al Carter

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