Authenticity in Fiction

I've been thinking about the details used in historical novels to create a sense of time and place a sense of authenticity. The 1950s seems to be an increasingly popular period, but it is the period of my childhood so I look for the details that tell me this is in fact written by someone who understands the period and pulls out the just-right details. 

 

We lived near the ocean and much of my early life involved heading to the beach, sailing with my family, or hiking in the nearby woods. Just about anyone who could get to the water had some kind of boat, and sailing out of the harbor meant waving to a wide variety of ocean goers. Managing movement on the water is a great leveler—the fanciest boat in the world means nothing with a poor skipper. This is still true.

 

As children, we were outdoors most of the summer day, off riding on our bikes without much thought given to the kinds of dangers adults worry about today. As long as we were home by dinner time, no one seemed to care where we went. We walked or rode the bus to school; parents didn't drive us as a rule. 

 

Other details also seem to be missing. In a TV ad for something now forgotten, the female voice over said, "This generation has known nothing but war or the threat of war or talk of war." I'm not sure what the point was but it came on regularly. The other TV ads that were so common were for cigarettes. It may seem absurd but when I went for a checkup before getting married, my doctor actually said, if you're going to smoke try something bland like . . .  and he named a particular brand. Seems unreal now, but I remember the conversation well and only later learned that he smoked. Most historicals set in the 1950s select the TV shows as the authentic detail, but skip the ads and ignore the test patterns that ran after the station ended programming. A cousin visiting from New York City in the 1960s was shocked to find that Boston stations ended programming at 1:00 a.m. What was he going to do all night?

 

The story might be taking place in a small town or city, but the big events of the time touched everyone. The McCarthy hearings in 1953 and 1954 led to the well-known black lists but they also explain why some writers of nonfiction felt it necessary to include passages clarifying their opposition to Communism. I came across this in a nonfiction book on mental health. It's an oddity in American publications that I haven't encountered in any other period. McCarthy frightened a lot of people. The other background hum came from the Korean War, which is now mostly remembered through the movie and TV series MASH.

 

That decade also saw the widespread introduction of antibiotics. The 1950s have been called the golden age of antibiotic discovery, and up to half of all drugs commonly used today were discovered in that decade. Of course, our overuse of these drugs may have brought us back to the original problem—diseases with no treatment, but now with treatment ineffective because of growing drug resistance.

 

We may think technology is the defining feature of ages since the 1950s but I'd point to something else: the level of trust, which was taken for granted. We knew our neighbors and expected to be able to call on them when needed. A car accident brought sympathy and help rather than an automatic lawsuit. Pizza was a treat and not a regular one, and people rarely went out to dinner. And there was fewer of everything—fewer cars in the driveway, fewer clothes in the closet, fewer (many fewer) telephones in the house. But there were lots of jobs. Unemployment hovered between 2.7% and, briefly, 6.2%, the same rate as today when businesses are complaining about finding enough workers. We thought transistor radios and TV were amazing. Except for Ray Bradbury and his colleagues, most of us couldn't imagine what was coming in the future.

What decades do you feel more familiar with? What features do you look for in an historical novel in that or any other time? What makes the story feel authentic?