I would also like to mention in particular my indebtedness to the two historical studies that cover most fully the actions of Lord Dunmore’s Ethiopian Regiment, both of which were invaluable: Ivor Noël Hume’s 1775: Another Part of the Field (Knopf, 1966) and Peter J. Wrike’s The Governor’s Island: Gwynn’s Island, Virginia, During the Revolution (BrandyLane, The Gwynn’s Island Museum, 1993). Other important information came from Percy Burdelle Caley’s Dunmore: Colonial Governor of New York and Virginia, 1770–1782 (PhD Thesis, University of Pittsburgh, 1939).
I am indebted to Brooks Haxton for permission to quote this (in slightly adapted form) from his gorgeous Heraclitus translation, entitled Fragments: The Collected Wisdom of Heraclitus (Viking, 2001). The quotations on this page and this page are taken from Philip Wheelwright, The Presocratics (Macmillan, 1966). The quotation on this page is taken from Sophocles’ “Ajax” in Sophocles II (University of Chicago Press, 1957). The fragment on this page is taken whole from Blaise Pascal, Pensées (translated by W. F. Trotter. Modern Library, 1941).
Several of the items in this book are transcriptions of real eighteenth-century documents (slightly edited for length and clarity). These include documents 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. The originals are available in a variety of sources, most notably Peter Force’s American Archives, Series IV, Volumes 3–6 (Washington: 1837–1853).
A NOTE ON THE TYPE
The font used for the text is a version of Caslon. It is based on the original font designed by William Caslon in England in the 1720s. His type designs were highly regarded there and soon set the standard for printing. The use of Caslon spread to the American colonies, where it was the most frequently used font, from printing fine books to newspapers, and was used to typeset the Declaration of Independance. Of course, your e-reader will format the text in a different typeface anyway—perhaps even something sans serif. Is the loss of this type symbolic of the degeneration of our founding ideals over time, or is it proof of the generous flexibility of democratic values? Or is it just a forgotten footnote on an unread page at the butt-end of history?
A READERS’ GUIDE
Many American stories follow the rags-to-riches format made famous by Horatio Alger Jr., in which the main character, living in poverty, works hard and sacrifices to achieve the American dream. By contrast, at the beginning of the story, Octavian appears to have everything — his mother, his health, fine clothes, and a superior education — but at the end, he has little or nothing left. Do you agree? Is this a riches-to-rags story?
When Mr. Sharpe takes over the Novanglian College of Lucidity, Octavian is no longer given stories and whole manuscripts to learn from, but rather fragments in isolation, on which he is tested. Might Anderson be making a comment about the current practice of standardized testing in education today? Would you agree with him?
When Octavian joins Lord Dunmore’s Royal Ethiopian Regiment, he hears the many stories of his fellow Africans and records them in his journal. How does this informal education on the condition of his fellow man compare with the formal classical education he received at the College of Lucidity? Which had more influence on the man that Octavian becomes by the story’s end?
Late in the story, Dr. Trefusis declares that “‘Only the dead hath seen the end of war.’ ” (located on this page). Is a nation that chooses peace and puts down its weapons forever at risk of invasion by another seeking dominion? Or do you believe that Octavian is right in his hope that there must be “some place one could go and begin again. This time, untainted”?
A rumination in Josiah Gitney’s diary (located on this page) questions “whether Man is a Reasonable Creature hamper’d by Passions, or a Passionate Creature hamper’d by Reason.” Which side are you on?
For such a serious story, which includes an abundance of grim events, the text is also peppered with humor. Is there a humorous moment or line that stuck out for you? Which character do you find the most humorous?
In a story that focuses so intently on identity, names are very important. Cassiopeia is named after a constellation, and astronomy permeates the novels. Some characters are given only numbers for names. Pro Bono takes on many names throughout the books to escape from trouble, and Octavian chooses to take the surname of Nothing. Discuss the implications of these names as they relate to the characters and to the plot.
This work was originally published for a teen audience. Some adults think it is too sophisticated for teens to understand. What books were you reading as a teen that adults might suggest were too complicated for you? Were there any that you reread as an adult in order to gain new understanding? Do you think we underestimate teens today?
Bravery in the face of uncertainty is a theme throughout the narrative. The rebels rose up against their own powerful British government at great risk and with unknown outcome. What acts of bravery are committed by the book’s individual main characters? Octavian? Cassiopeia? Pro Bono? Mr. Trefusis? Mr. Gitney?
In his author’s note, Anderson says that while researching and writing Octavian Nothing, he encountered this paradox of the Revolutionary War era: that “Liberty was at once a quality so abstract so as to be insubstantial — and yet so real in its manifestations that it was worth dying for.” What does liberty mean to you? What hypocrisies are at work in our current time for which we may be held accountable in the years to come?
A CONVERSATION WITH M. T. ANDERSON
1. This second volume concludes Octavian’s story, which you thought of as a single narrative. Did you know everything that was going to happen before you started writing these books?
Like many writers, I usually begin with a messy collection of images and fragments: in this case, the image of Octavian standing in brown gloom; the idea of a pox party; a picture of Octavian’s mother playing the harpsichord; the desire to examine the Loyalists during the Revolution; a question about what colonial Boston was like when it was militarized and under siege … things like that. So I started doing research and seeing which ideas stuck around and which became less interesting.
It took me about six months before I began writing, and about eight months before I actually knew the whole story. A few months in, the discovery of Lord Dunmore’s Ethiopian Regiment — an episode of the war I’d never heard about before — convinced me I needed to change my original ending. By the time I’d written about sixty or so pages of the first volume, I knew pretty much the whole plot. In fact, I ended up working on the two parts simultaneously, revising the first book while I wrote the second book.
2. Both books use a number of di|erent ways to tell the story, such as journal entries and letters. Why did you choose to use a variety of ways to tell Octavian’s story?
One of the challenges of writing a historical novel is the question of perspective: People from the past were profoundly di|erent from us in so many ways. The whole way they saw the world was very alien. I find that fascinating. (Who would I have been if I didn’t believe in the circulation of the blood, or microorganisms, or outer space, or the equality of women?)
The question is, how do you reproduce that element of di|erence? How do you make sure your book about the Middle Ages, for example, really feels medieval-ish, and not like a bunch of high-fiving Californians in really stupid hats? The Middle Ages weren’t just castles and armor. Ancient Rome wasn’t just togas. The Mongol Empire wasn’t just 90210 on horses.
Each period, each country, each city has its own constellation of attitudes and beliefs. Some people believe humans to be essentially reasonable. Some people believe humans to be essentially wild and irrational. Some see angels in the stars. Others feel no safety on the earth. For thousands of years, people su|ered from diseases we no longer believe could exist and were cured with remedies that seem nonsensical to us. Who’s to say they were entirely wrong, or that we’re right? They were the ones who hobbled and then could walk.
I decided that the best way to explore the texture of eighteenthcentury American thought and life was to try to enter into their langu
age. For example, in the eighteenth century, the word man could stand in for all of humankind, male and female. Now that would sound a little weird to us — like leaving out 50 percent of the species. Think of phrases like “the rights of man” or “the rights of all men,” which were quite common back in the day. That di|erence in usage — all men versus all people — conveys subliminally an important philosophical di|erence between the eighteenth century and the twenty-first. That’s just one example of how trying to write like someone from the past forces you to try to think like someone from the past. It conceals certain things from view and reveals others.
So that’s why I decided to write the book as a series of documents. I wanted it all to sound like it was coming unfiltered from the period. I wanted to raise the question of who is allowed to describe us and of how those descriptions linger in history and form our understanding of the past.
3. What was the research process like for this book?
It took me a long time to do the research and writing — six years in all. I loved doing the research. (Mainly because it allowed me to delay writing for a while.… Writing is never easy!) I read as widely as I could in texts of the period: scientific treatises, tactical manuals, Gothic novels, joke books, diaries, ads.
Because I was so incredibly slow, research tools actually changed as I wrote. By the end of the writing, there were these incredible online resources that hadn’t existed a few years before — all kinds of obscure books available now on Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive. You can read them instantaneously, without getting out of your chair (or your tin bathtub). Now, there is something that has improved since the eighteenth century.
4. Did you have to adjust historical details about the Revolutionary War and Lord Dunmore’s regiment in the interest of storytelling?
In general, I tried to be extremely scrupulous about basing everything in these books firmly on fact — no matter how strange the facts may sound. I was particularly careful about this in the section on Lord Dunmore’s Ethiopian Regiment. Not many people have written about this campaign or even know it existed, so I thought it was important to try to reproduce the actual history as closely as possible. I tried to synthesize things that were known rather than making up new events. I did drop several months out of the campaign in the middle. (Pay close attention to the dates and you’ll see where this happens.) In my version, they happen, but no one talks about them.
I took more liberties with the timeline of the siege of Boston — but still, the books adhere very closely to the truth, insofar as it can be verified. The skirmish on Hog and Noddle’s islands, for example, described in the first volume, is extrapolated from descriptions of the period, and Lieutenant-General Burgoyne’s play The Blockade of Boston, really was interrupted by an attack on Charlestown, though a few months later than I placed the event.
There are several real documents included among the counterfeits: Dunmore’s proclamation, for example, Washington’s letter about Dunmore, and the description of the final battle on Gwynn’s Island. (A complete list can be found in the acknowledgments.)
5. The novel ends with Octavian’s future unknown. What were your thoughts on leaving the ending open in this way?
I guess, at the end of this book, I launched him into the world — and I felt that’s all he needed from me. He’s on his own now! I wanted the reader to feel the ambiguity of Octavian’s future. For one thing, this is what looking at history is like: you catch glimpses of these people — sometimes very intimate and intense glimpses — and then they’re gone. The record runs out.
M. T. ANDERSON is the author of Feed, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, as well as the National Book Award-winning first volume of The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, which also received a Michael L. Printz Honor and a Boston Globe–Horn Book Award and was a New York Times bestseller. Growing up in the Boston area, he was surrounded by early American history. “I got my hair cut in the town that sent the first detachment of militiamen against the British,” he says. “My orthodontist worked in the town where Paul Revere was captured by the Redcoats.” On the 225th anniversary of the Battle of Old North Bridge, after watching several reenactments, he started wondering, “What would it be like to be standing there — untrained — facing the British with a gun I usually used to shoot turkeys? What would it be like to be standing there, not knowing that we would win? I decided to write a book from the point of view of someone who wouldn’t know the outcome of the war and who had to make a hard choice between sides.” M. T. Anderson lives in Massachusetts.
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