WI: Abe Lincoln, novelist?

phx1138

Yes, I've been watching "Lincoln" on CNN... ;)

WI he'd gotten advice from Conan & not gone into politics? Could Lincoln have been successful?

Obviously, the Civil War is different; it almost certainly doesn't happen in 1861.

What might Lincoln have written? Political novels? Gothics? Legal thrillers?;) (Yeah, he's the 19th Century's answer to Scott Turow.:openedeyewink: Or maybe Erle Stanley Gardner.:openedeyewink: )

Are there other butterflies I've missed?
 

phx1138

Sapa Inka Wiraqucha said:
Maybe he writes Jefferson Davis: Vampire Hunter?
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Hmm...

You'd have to get to around 1900 & vampires being a Thing in fiction. Unless you can offer strong evidence of Carmilla being more influential than I think. Or unless Lincoln reads more penny dreadfuls than I think & follows Varney. (OTOH, if he's going to be a novelist, that might make sense...)
 

phx1138

PNWKing said:
Would it be possible that he writes novels with abolitionist themes.
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I'd say probably not. He seems to have been of the view slavery would die out, but shouldn't be abolished. He saw it as wrong, but not something the North (or abolitionists) should be telling the South to get rid of--especially when it would die on its own in time.

What his literary tastes ran to is pretty wide open, though. He was an auto-didact, so anything from romance to mystery to Gothic might well catch his fancy.
 

Alien and Sedition Bat

phx1138 said:
Yes, I've been watching "Lincoln" on CNN... ;)

WI he'd gotten advice from Conan & not gone into politics? Could Lincoln have been successful?

Obviously, the Civil War is different; it almost certainly doesn't happen in 1861.

What might Lincoln have written? Political novels? Gothics? Legal thrillers?;) (Yeah, he's the 19th Century's answer to Scott Turow.:openedeyewink: Or maybe Erle Stanley Gardner.:openedeyewink: )

Are there other butterflies I've missed?
Click to expand...
Seriously, he had the literary skill, but I don't think he would have invented 20th century potboiler subgenres; he would have written about the real world, including the politics, of his day, perhaps with a strong romantic element. Like Disraeli. Grant also could have been a fine novelist, judging by his memoirs, one of the masterpieces of American literature.
 

phx1138

Alien and Sedition Bat said:
Seriously, he had the literary skill, but I don't think he would have invented 20th century potboiler subgenres; he would have written about the real world, including the politics, of his day, perhaps with a strong romantic element. Like Disraeli. Grant also could have been a fine novelist, judging by his memoirs, one of the masterpieces of American literature.
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I'm not seriously suggesting he would, just offering them as stylistic patterns he might follow. It's not like genre fiction didn't exist.
 
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