Reprinted Excerpt from Writing Backwards: Historical Fiction and the Reshaping of the American Canon (2023)

Alexander Manshel talks to the editors about his first book, Writing Backwards: Historical Fiction and the Reshaping of the American Canon (Columbia University Press, 2023), part of which is reprinted here with his permission (Chapter 2: The Making of the Greatest Generation). As the author writes, the book argues that over the last forty years the American literary field has transformed to celebrate narratives of the historical past over all other literary genres. In this period, key literary institutions—from the National Endowment for the Arts to major literary prizes and university English departments—have worked to promote the idea that historical fiction is singular in its artistic seriousness, its pedagogical utility, and its political potency. This shift in literary value has gone hand in hand with the increasing recognition and canonization of Black, Asian American, Latinx, and Indigenous writers in the United States: that is, the vast majority of minoritized writers who have been consecrated by these institutions over the last four decades have been celebrated for writing about the historical past.