I enjoyed reading "The Help." However, being an old broad, I noticed some anachronisms. At least I THINK they're anachronisms for the years 1962 - 1964:
1. Author mentions liquid "typing fluid" - apparently it was invented by then; but was it used then in Mississippi? It sure wasn't used then in Milwaukee!!
2. Author refers to the use of parchment paper. I never ever heard of parchment paper (for cooking) until the 90s. Were cooks using it in Mississippi then?
3. Author refers to typewriter INK, i.e. going to the store to buy some. Haha! I know that one's wrong. We used typing RIBBONS. She also refers to eyes that "sting from the smell of typing ink." Never happened to me.
4. Character in the book refers to "a window" of time. I don't think that was jargon in the 60s as it is now (and I'm really tired of hearing it).
5. Character uses these words: "priortize" and "grow exponentially." I never heard those terms before the 90s. (I'm sick of them too!)
6. Character mentions a silent auction. Did they have them back then? I sure have been to a lot of them, and enjoy them, but never remember them at charity events years ago.
7. Character uses spray starch in 1964. My mom was still using the liquid stuff back then, rolling shirts and keeping them wet in the fridge until she could get to them for ironing.
Anyway - good story, talented (YOUNG) writer - but my question is - are all the editors at her publishing house similarly too young to notice these things?? They need some old broads in-house!
Gail Grenier is the author of Calling All Horses, Dog Woman, Don't Worry Baby, and Dessert First, all available on Amazon.com.
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ReplyDeleteShake n' Bake was not introduced until 1965.
Celia was first described as wearing a pink "pantsuit". Pantsuits were popularized in the mid to late 60s by YSL. Women might have worn slacks in 1962, but mainly they still wore dresses.
One of the characters is said to be humming Love Me Do, a Beatle song which didn't hit the charts until 1964.
My Favorite Martian debuted on Sept 29, 1963. I rather doubt it became the favorite TV show of 3 year old Mae Mobley in two weeks. I rather doubt 3 year olds had favorite TV shows, period.
Most egregious: A mention is made of (my words) long haired instigators from up north, wearing peace signs. Peace signs, really, in 1963? Vietnam was barely a skirmish.
I just read it and I thought the anachronisms were jarring--I noticed the reference to "long-haired" instigators. Stuart comes back from a trip to San Francisco and refers to his old gf wearing a prairie dress and a peace sign. The peace sign was probably around but would have been very obscure at that point, not to mention Viet Name (were they still calling it French Indochina?). Even the Berkeley Free Speech movement was not yet underway really, and the pics I've seen of those protestors show pretty short hair, conventional appearance--in 1966, my high school dress code defined "long hair" as coming below the top of a boy's collar. The term for counter culture types would have still been beatnik. I won a talking doll in a local contest, a Scooby Doo, in around 1964 or 1965 and she was beatnik, so that's as far as mass culture had gone yet. There were some people in Berkeley--like Ken Kesey's crowd--wearing offbeat clothing in the early 1960's but again, folks in Mississippi would not have been hearing about it. I didn't think of checking product releases and didn't pay too much attention to the "typing ink" reference. I'm surprised the editors didn't catch any of those items.
ReplyDeleteThere's another book about the era, "Four Spirits", which takes place in Birmingham. It also has a college-educated white girl whose consciousness is raising, a complex storyline involving multiple characters, from a KKK wannabe gas station attendant to a Jewish civil rights activist to African-American women and men (including Rev Shuttlesworth) and an undercover FBI agent who makes a few brief appearances.
Excellent, excellent points! I agree about the hair and "beatnik."
DeleteDo you like the book "Four Spirits?" Fewer anachronisms?
Oh, and besides "prioritize" Skeeter also refers to never having been "in a relationship" before. Really, she'd never had a beau before!
ReplyDeleteHow about this: the phrase "in a relationship" is a rather new one. I sure never heard it back in the Sixties! I guess some women go through high school and college without having a beau... it is possible....
DeleteHippies didn't exist, and "Love Me Do" was only a glint in Lennon and McCarney's eyes. There were a BUNCH in the movie and the book. Liquid Paper (or was it White Out)was invented in the early seventies by Michael Nesmith's mother. Michael Nesmith was the Monkee who always wore a hat.
ReplyDeleteHi Anonymous,
DeleteWouldn't you think the author would have worked harder making sure there were no such anachronisms? Strange. I just finished a novel (based on my experiences) set in 1972, and man did I work on the time elements! I suppose I may have made some mistakes, but I hope not such glaring ones. Oh, and I can only hope for such success as The Help had! haha
Thanks goodness somebody else noticed these anachronisms! They absolutely undermined any credibility the author might have had. Good thing she got out of journalism; research is beyond her! Careless writing and editing! Mini skirts before Mary Quant! NOOOO!
ReplyDeleteI agree about the carelessness - still, I enjoyed the novel. It reminded me of "DaVinci Code" - full of glaring errors, yet it held my interest. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteMy concern with the story (the Hollywood film, actually), is NOT the anachronisms that might appear in the details, but the anachronisms as regards "mentalities", social relations, etc. I have noticed that not only is it fashionable to eliminate the word "nigger" in present-day stories whose setting is a past in which "nigger" was common parlance, but the subordinate relationships (subordinate mentalities) themselves of blacks in films depicting the past, but made in the present. I can live with utterly irrelevant details that jar with the past, not with meaningful "mind sets" that are grossly out of kilter with the period portrayed!
ReplyDelete