The Watergate scandal has had such a large impact on American society that people alive at the time still remember it vividly and recall the hostile environment it allowed to develop. Democrats and Republicans were at each other’s throats vying for political power and support of the people. Thomas Mallon’s version of the events surrounding Watergate in Watergate: A Novel accurately exemplifies the complicated nature of myth-history. While some parts of the story are true, some characters and plot line events are fictional.
I found Mallon’s decision to blend fiction with non-fiction to tell a story very interesting as it creates a third side of the story. As readers, we are exposed to the opinions of Democrats, Republicans, and factual events that could have been altered or tampered with for either side’s advantage. Myth-history is complicated as it can be difficult to decipher true facts from false statements but I think Mallon did an excellent job in providing the stories presented from both sides.
I agree that the concept of myth-history can be easily applied to Watergate: A Novel. As unsettling as it may be, all the events surrounding this scandal may never be known. Because of this, Mallon’s was able to incorporate believable fictional elements to this well-known story.
I agree. I think that the incorporation of fictional characters was ingenious because it developed a complete perspective of the Watergate scandal. Mallon did an excellent job in bringing relevance to the scandal and provided mythistory to describe the event. This revealed an accurate story about one of the worst political scandals in American history.
I agree with how you say the fictional characters help to develop a complete perspective of the scandal. Having these characters help to show how people at the time really felt about the scandal as a whole.
I think that Mallon’s slight touch of fiction in this novel helped him tell the Watergate story more clearly. It was such a complicated and extensive scandal and his addition of a few fictional characters added to the drama perfectly. He also did a great job of maintaining the important truths of the scandal and still explaining it in accurate detail.
I agree, especially because often times the main reason we’re given regarding why Watergate happened was because of pure emotions. Many historians (and the people who worked with/for President Nixon) classify Richard Nixon as an extremely paranoid man. Even the documentary we watched in class on Friday said Nixon viewed the press as basically a political opponent itself. With a scandal that had entirely to do with emotions and fears to just retell the story in a textbook way would cause for the reader to lose important aspects of the event. The slight touches of fiction I felt helped me understand the motivations and actions of the characters/real life politicians better.
I liked how you compared it to myth history and I would love to open the discussion further to include Nonfiction Novels/creative nonfiction. Watergate A Novel is historical fiction as some characters and actions are fictitious. Nonfiction Novels are dramatized retellings of events where the details are all real but are told more like a regular fiction story. In both cases of nonfiction novels and historical fiction there is an aspect of dramatization that can skew stories a certain way, that can accidentally make the story biased, adding to the myth of it all. Adding emotion into the historical narratives makes it possible to empathize with people/countries/communities that one wouldn’t normally side with if they were given only pure facts and statistics.