Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Historical research for literature

I guess I hadn't realized quite how much of this I had written down in relation to my novel set in Toronto in the early 90s, but this post discusses some of the things I want to make sure I cover, including the fact that I want to go through Maclean's one more time and pull out the things that would have been uppermost on people's minds at the time.  I haven't gone to see if the Toronto Reference Library has the bound Maclean's but Robarts does, and that seems to be where I will probably spend most of my research time.  (So much easier working from bound volumes than microfiche!)

So I have decided to go forward with this play about some bright high school students and their study group, even though I haven't totally decided if I want to introduce the time traveller theme, just because it will warp the rest of the dynamics so seriously.  On the other hand, I haven't really decided what would replace it, since I don't want this to be a lame Breakfast Club retread (the emphasis is on lame retread -- I actually still like The Breakfast Club a lot, though a few parts are creaky).  But leaving that aside, I have decided that the time frame has to be 1985, 1986 or 1987.  (This post discusses why it is so important to pick a date and stick to it.)  I guess just as I am still working out some issues from my early 20s, there are a few things that I don't mind celebrating, reairing or working out from my high school years.  I remember we were hyper-mobile and basically could go to any friend's house for hours.  Quite a bit has started flooding back, now that I really think over these times, and maybe I can capture a bit in this play.  I've decided to use a few of the names of my friends (or quasi-friends) of that time as a bit of a tribute to that period.  It wasn't all terrible by any means, but I was glad to get out of high school and go on to college.

One big question is if they are actually so bright, would they really bother to get together to study for the ACT?  I remember studying for finals in a study group, and I remember one girl asked me for some help in studying chemistry or perhaps it was just math.  But finals are too late, since college decisions will have been made long before (unless it is juniors studying for finals).  I kind of like the whole ACT vs. SAT, since that was a real thing in Michigan.  Most of the Midwest preferred ACT, but if you were only applying for East Coast schools (and UMichigan), you could get away with just SAT, which is what I did.  I don't remember what UChicago and Northwestern required, though I suspect they would accept SATs only back then.  Neither was really on my radar at the time.  So that means that the kids do have to be high achievers for this to even be an issue.  I can probably dance around that a bit.  One of the kids is being paid to turn up, and for a couple of the others it is more social than "study hall."

So one significant issue is that the ACT changed dramatically in 1989 with the "Social Studies" section being replaced by a more general reading comprehension section with one essay on a social science theme.  Also, the science section changed a bit, though perhaps less drastically.  (And apparently the optional written portion didn't even turn up for another few years, which complicates a bit of the time travel plot, and would necessitate the kids prepping for the SAT as well.)  I am having an absurd difficulty in tracking down any information on the test from the mid 80s, since the guides were all overhauled.  Libraries eventually pulped all the old test books to make way for the current ones.  I can't say I blame them.  There is a small chance that an education library (such as OISE here at UT) might have this, but it's hard to say.

The catch is that in a book, one might put in a small note at the end to the effect that this old ACT is historically accurate, but in a play, almost anybody under 40 will think that I made a mistake: "There was no such section."  But if I do make the changes, writing about the newer test, then anyone older than 40 will assume I don't know what I am talking about.  (Not that many people get that persnickety, but some certainly do.)  It is really a fine line to walk here, though I think I can finesse it.  No question discussing the SAT is simpler, as the core elements didn't change much until very recently, and most of the controversies have been over whether calculators (or calculator watches!) were allowed in the testing facilities.  (It's interesting how some of this is coming back, and I definitely remember having discussions over the tests and which people would take.  While I was fine with the science and probably would have aced the old Social Studies section, I didn't want to pay for both tests and skipped the ACT.  But I definitely remember one or two of my peers avoided the SAT, as they didn't want to have to write a long essay.)

What may be of more interest is just how hard it is to research some of these things, since the 80s is really the "lost time" before the internet.  Many of my high school peers have never joined the internet or not in a way that allows them to be found, and this is just not the case for folks coming of age in the mid 90s to say nothing of teenagers today where their whole lives are on display.  What does and doesn't make it into archives is definitely an interesting question.  It's very possible that due to the preoccupations of the Boomers, that 100 years from now the 60s and 70s will end up easier to research than the 80s.

This page might be helpful if I have the characters reference TV.  I remember a friend's family let him watch Dallas, which really wasn't on in our house.  We did get to watch Cosby Show, Family Ties, Night Court and occasionally Moonlighting.  Personally I was never a big Cheers fan.  (Married with Children was pretty different, but I think really would not have been a major factor for these kids.  Having one of them mock the weird Fox network is too inside baseball, even though we did occasionally say such things in 1987.)  But I did watch (and they probably would have watched) a bunch of fairly bad action TV shows like Knight Rider, A Team, Magnum P.I., Simon & Simon and Remington Steele (probably the best of the bunch, though personally I liked the first season the best and thought it was a mistake to simplify it down to just  Laura Holt, Remington and then their third wheel, Mildred Krebs).  I definitely do not want to spend the whole time worrying about what TV episode the kids are discussing, but a few shows really were must see (and discuss at school) TV, like Miami Vice in its first couple of seasons (which does dovetail in fairly well with the setting of the play).

One thing that is for certain is that these kids will know about computers, even though the internet doesn't really exist for them.  They'll have dot matrix printers and a couple may have taken programming classes.  One of them might own a Mac already (U Michigan was starting to heavily promote Macs for entering underclassmen).* 

I think I will sleep on this one more night and see if I can resolve the broader question of how serious or farcical to make this play (with the knowledge that if it is farcical I can probably interest more companies, but some of the things that I want them to discuss are not really that funny -- but then again this puts me straight into Breakfast Club territory...).  I'll probably put together one more post on how some playwrights (myself included) can shape and reshape material with specific companies in mind or more generally keeping commercial concerns in focus, but then I just need to start writing rather than writing about writing.

* One of the guys that I spent the most time with wasn't even that interested in college.  He wanted to go directly to work for Apple, and I think that is what he did, though he probably ultimately got a degree.  He might have made the most impact on the world of any of us fairly bright kids as he was pretty involved in the development of the iPod.  And I am starting to swing back to the idea of the time travel, since I can have Brent (as Eddy) come back and say that he needs Neil to make a ton of money to fund this time machine, so he will have to go into computers and miniaturization rather than engineering and solar power.  Of course Trevor will say something inane about who would want everything that small, as they are sure to lose it or smash it when they sit down.  I'm still having a bit of trouble getting the overall tone right, but I think this is the direction to go rather than just 60-75 minutes of random bonding exercises amongst these high schoolers.

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