The Queen of the Night

When I first started writing this novel, I’ll admit, I didn’t know what to think of myself for doing it. I felt confused, a little like the boy from the Ice Queen fairy tale, who wakes up far from home, realizing he’s been under a spell. France? 19th Century? Opera made sense to me some—my father was always listening to it, always singing it, even. He loved in particular La Traviata.

My confusion came because I thought of myself as a modern person, making contemporary fiction in contemporary times. For that reason, when I described this novel, for example, to a friend who’s also a fan, she said, Will I even like this? But as I tell people, there’s your idea of yourself and who you are, and both are always present.

I should point out, some of my favorite contemporary fiction is about characters in other time periods. The challenge is always to scrape away the level of kitsch that’s descended on so much of how we think of those  times, in order to follow your intuitions, and  yet still have a good time with the story. So on the one hand, you are lost in what a friend of mine calls the enchantment, but on the other, always aware that somewhere, a historian may cut you like a fish for forgetting this or that seemingly small detail.

Having said that, I’m not longer surprised to be writing about a young woman singer, alive during the Second Empire in France, during the birth of luxury and couture as we know it, all of it paid for by the real estate junk bonds that were being used to remake Paris. I’m not surprised to find her under the political rule of a man descended from an earlier ruler of the same name, the scion of a political dynasty, who was a terrible public speaker but popular with the common man, who had “voting helpers” at the polls, and who, because of an ailment he kept secret and that became more and more serious, eventually had his wife increasingly act in his stead. This emperor took away the freedom of the press, resulting in a news media dominated by stories critical of the out-of-control sex lives of female celebrities–the only thing the press could really report on–and these celebrities were famous in part because of the sums they spent on their jewelry and clothes. Professors had to sign loyalty oaths, as did the Senate. The end of that Empire, when the novel is set, finds the country at war with Prussia, a war begun with a false sense of confidence on the part of the French, and undertaken in part to restore the country’s sense of national pride and patriotism.

Now the only thing for me is to avoid making the parallels too plain, or rather, to avoid appearing as if I’m pressing them too hard. It’s strange to work on history and also feel as if one is having a clairvoyant experience. In the end, though, all I can do is stay clear about the story.