How Far is Far Enough?

The question a writer has when doing historical research is How much is enough? I'm researching New York City in the 1930s, a period whose residents, as it turns out, left a plethora of journals, essays, and books for their grandchildren or great grandchildren since their children probably tired of the old stories long before Mom and Pop passed away.

Finding so much information right at my fingertips--quite literally, thanks to the Internet--is exciting. I could sit and read for hours. Or, I could watch the 10-hr PBS documentary I bought about the history of NYC. I could spend the rest of my life, as some historians do, researching and writing about one short period, say 1930-1939, and never run out of work.

The thing is, I don't want to write history. I want to write fiction. My favorite history books are narratives, so in that way, they are stories, the primary difference between them and fiction being that the stories are true. But I don't even want to write narrative non-fiction, though I'm not sure why.

Faulkner says that all great fiction is about the human heart in conflict with itself. Everything I write rests on that theme. I'm interested in the 1930s because I feel as if ordinary people found themselves engaged in conflicts of the heart they never anticipated as the economy crashed and the Communist movement spread. Americans today would be surprised to know how many Americans moved to Russia in the early 1930s to find what they believed would be the promised land and which we now know turned out to be a nightmare. What conflicts they must have suffered.

To return to my original question, though, at what point have I done enough research? Will my story be doomed to mediocrity if I get a street name wrong or make up the name of a local movie theater? Searching for details of that nature can take days or longer so that, by the time I find that tidbit, I've lost my character or forgotten my plot.

If anyone lived in the lower West Side in the 1930s or had a family member who did, I would like to talk with them. Otherwise, I think I'll do enough research to get the tone right and then move on to the story while I still feel it in my bones.