{"id":1092,"date":"2017-10-23T00:44:10","date_gmt":"2017-10-23T00:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/?p=1092"},"modified":"2017-10-23T00:47:25","modified_gmt":"2017-10-23T00:47:25","slug":"i-have-no-idea-if-there-were-communist-go-go-parties-or-balancing-research-with-creative-license","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/?p=1092","title":{"rendered":"I Have No Idea if There Were Communist Go-Go Parties (or, Balancing Research with Creative License)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I hav\"\"e written Communist go-go dancers. Not in a comedy, either<\/a>. Technically, they were recruits among honors-level university students, but they broke into go-go dancing as the Party\u2019s party night deepened and the drinks mounted. The setting was early ’70s Budapest, and the Happiest Barracks in the Iron Curtain <\/a>reveled in its post-crackdown decay.<\/p>\n

Our POV Helena takes it from here:<\/p>\n

\n

For the next hour I danced with every man who asked and every man who cut in, a parade of faceless political officers with tobacco and vodka on their breaths. Some were bolder than others, but none too bold. When the folk music stopped and the newer records began, we changed to whatever fast dance went with the song. I twisted, I ponied, I did the loco-motion, I thrilled at the heat of it all, and when the men tired the other girls and I go-go danced for them.<\/p>\n

It was after the go-go dancing that Typhon approached. He brought with him two coupes of sparkling wine.<\/p>\n

“You must be thirsty,” he said over The Byrds. He reached out the wine as if completely certain of my accepting, kissed my offered hand, and said, “The Socialist Workers\u2019 Party appreciates your contributions to dance.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

–\u201cSparks to the Bear\u2019s Hide\u201d (MWA’s Ice Cold<\/em>, Grand Central, 2014<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Now, I have no idea if such recruiting events ever devolved into Marxist Laugh-In<\/a> cutaways. Mine did. For good reason: creative license. A little swinging worked best for the story whole. Especially so if swinging violated Party rules.<\/p>\n

Hey, I\u2019m a storyteller, not a historian.<\/p>\n

Research and vetting fascinates me, when it doesn\u2019t vex me. Where and how to find accurate sources? When is there balance enough to write with authority? How to pluck the precious few telling details that belong the page from the boring chaff? Crucial stuff, and hard work. Research can feel like a chore, but it\u2019s as central a part of writing as grammar.<\/p>\n

Importantly to Communist go-go dancing, research can feel like a paradox. Get it right<\/em>, our inner editors demand. And that’s not wrong. Facts are the story bedrock on which fiction’s credibility rests. Woe be a crime writer who gets a gun caliber or forensic detail wrong. Or any writer who misses relevant points of culture. But facts, in fiction, ultimately serve a greater master: the truth.<\/p>\n

As in a given story\u2019s truth, fiction being a constructed reality. And to be true, in the Papa Bear<\/a> sense, is write honestly. Sometimes (and Hemingway would slug me here) the most honest thing a writer does is to make stuff up. More charitably, to tell the facts slant. Fiction’s purpose is going deeper than facts, to something more compellingly human.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Hungarian Parliament (courtesy of Wikipedia Commons)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Enter go-go dancing. It added verve to what could\u2019ve otherwise been a chitchat affair. And a dull evening would have been my fault as a writer. \u201cSparks\u201d is about decay, to include of politics and morality. The openness of sex and booze and inattention to protocol were advanced symptoms of the regime\u2019s post-ideological disease.<\/p>\n

But \u201cSparks\u201d is about more than that. It’s Helena’s<\/em> story. A Rolling Stones fanatic, our closet rebel listened non-stop to a bootleg Beggar’s Banquet<\/em> LP that filtered behind the Curtain. She’s fixated, repressed, damaged. Her spin on the dance floor is her release, a final one she thinks, youth for mortality.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll never find those truths in history books.<\/p>\n

\"\"Which isn\u2019t to say no research was involved. I read multiple histories on the Cold War and communist theories. I Googled rafts of articles and found documentary bits here and there. I studied city layout<\/a>, street car systems, service revolvers. Rolling Stones discology. I wrote all of that as accurately as my abilities permitted.<\/p>\n

Research presents the writer with a constant flow of choices: rewrite to avoid the unknown or keep researching until reliable material emerges. Both are fine answers. What\u2019s not fine is half-BLEEPing it. To settle for wrong when it could have been right. Readers are as smart or smarter than writers, and nothing bursts the helium of suspended disbelief like a pinprick of doubt.<\/p>\n

Alas, no one ever wrote the go-go history of Party socials. Or if they did, alas, it\u2019s locked deep in library tomes or microfiche, lost to the ages. Or in prohibitively expensive expert trawling. The writer\u2019s choice shifts: does the story need a go-go dancing moment? \u201cSparks\u201d came alive there, with Helena\u2019s last moment to express ruined youth.<\/p>\n

I couldn’t make her truth strictly accurate, but I could make it real.\u00a0That may be a lame excuse to work go-go into a scene, but hey, I already said I was a storyteller.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have written Communist go-go dancers. Not in a comedy, either. Technically, they were recruits among honors-level university students, but they broke into go-go dancing as the Party\u2019s party night deepened and the drinks mounted. The setting was early ’70s Budapest, and the Happiest Barracks in the Iron Curtain reveled in its post-crackdown decay. Our… Continue reading I Have No Idea if There Were Communist Go-Go Parties (or, Balancing Research with Creative License)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10,92,6],"tags":[60,59,3,5],"class_list":["post-1092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime-mystery-and-suspense","category-short-stories","category-this-whole-writing-thing","tag-hungary","tag-ice-cold","tag-short-stories","tag-writing","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3CG0W-hC","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":247,"url":"https:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/?p=247","url_meta":{"origin":1092,"position":0},"title":"Behind: “Uprisings at Cap d’Antibes”","author":"rtmcontrol","date":"March 1, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"There\u2019s nothing like a good, old-school\u00a0revolution to get a story going. Great or small, a lightning coup or decades in the making, needed change or epic tragedy. Revolution, for better\u00a0or worse,\u00a0is essentially human. The idea of a revolution wriggled into my brain some time back. In my fiction usually a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Humor"","block_context":{"text":"Humor","link":"https:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/?cat=8"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2043,"url":"https:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/?p=2043","url_meta":{"origin":1092,"position":1},"title":"2022: 10 Years of Writing Stories","author":"rtmcontrol","date":"January 26, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"2022 marks ten years since I tried writing short stories. Technically, I wrote my first one--that I acknowledge--in 2010, but that was dabbling and na\u00efve ambition. 2011 was learning, and January 2012 brought my first short story acceptance: \"The Food Acquisition Breakdown,\" in wonderful but fledgling Canadian lit e-journal. 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