A pet peeve of mine (and by "pet peeve", I mean something that has potential to send me into a ranting froth rage that nobody else cares about) is when an author writes somebody else's work. I'm not talking about plagiarism; I'm talking about....is there even a word for it? Completionism? (Google says no. It also says "else's" isn't correct.)
An example: Frank Herbert wrote Dune. He created Arrakis, wrote six books pertaining to it, of varying quality (At the very least read Dune, if you have not). But those are, without question, Frank Herbert's. Frank Herbert passed away in 1986. Then his son, Brian Herbert, came along with Kevin J. Anderson. Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson have produced a number of Dune books that I'm not even going to count. I've heard tell that he had permission from his father, and I will tell you I don't give a single fuck. Because those are not his words. They are certainly not Kevin J. Anderson's words (and I'd in fact have more respect for Brian Herbert were he to have continued his father's legacy by his lonesome).
Another: Robert B. Parker passed away in 2010. I wasn't terribly familiar with his works, having only read (yet enjoyed) Appaloosa. However, there are a number of people finishing Robert B. Parkers' series: Robert Knott, Ace Atkins, Michael Brandman. Maybe he wanted this to happen. Maybe he sold the writes to the characters. But it's weird. To me. From my side of the library counter, patrons aren't so pleased with this change in authorship. They wanted Parker's characters to be Parker's characters, not belonging to Knott, or Atkins, or Brandman. They're not concerned with copyright or anything like that, that I can tell. They're just concerned with the characters they once knew are not quite the same people.
The list could go on. Erik Van Lustbader with Robert Ludlum's books. Dirk Cussler with Clive Cussler's books. I fully confess my ignorance to the wishes of these authors. Maybe they didn't care. Maybe the ones whose sons have taken over gave the reins with well wishes and fondness in their hearts, that their sons carried on their legacy.
Do you ever wonder about your legacy? Are you published? Unpublished? I heard tell (perhaps apocryphally) that Emily Dickinson wished her papers burned upon her death. So private that she wouldn't even allow her doctor entrance to her chambers, she had any number of tiny book bundles of poetry that she'd sewed together. That somebody picked the stitches out and shared with the world.
Was this right?
Would Jane Austen have enjoyed peoples' interpretations and reinterpretations of her characters? Would she have cared?
Would Margaret Mitchell have cared that two different people wrote two very different companions to Gone With the Wind (one being Scarlett, by Alexandra Ripley, authorized by the estate and not so bad. The other was Rhett Butler's People, by Donald McCaig which I found ridiculous and didn't like at all though I wanted it to be not bad)?
Would Daphne DuMaurier have objected to two very different companions to Rebecca, one a direct sequel and one a bit more removed (Mrs. DeWinter, by Susan Hill and Rebecca's Tale, by Sally Beauman . The latter I quite enjoyed. The former was a bit too Patricia Highsmith in its building of dread in a helpless situation.)
I have any number of stories, half written, finished, barely started. I have a number of completed novels, and a number of partially finished ones, or opening gestures. Few of them have been seen by anybody, for any number of reasons: nobody asks. Or they ask and never read it. Or I ask and they never read it. Or I don't think it's good enough to see light of day. Or it's personal. Or my household really respects privacy. Or my filing system is entirely inscrutable.
Whatever the reason, should my "papers" (i.e., electronic files) be stumbled upon, and then organized, and then published, is that my legacy? What would it say about me? Albert Camus' last novel was published, unfinished by him though somewhat edited by his children. I found it unreadable, and felt they should have just left it in whatever trunk they found it. Something like that does no justice to the writer who went before, and to the work that they brought to the world. It's a shame, and I feel like Camus would have been embarrassed by it. Or maybe he wouldn't have.
But, bottom line? I don't care of the manuscript is in your hands. If it isn't yours, it isn't yours.
Showing posts with label Albert Camus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Albert Camus. Show all posts
Monday, March 25, 2013
Sunday, April 22, 2012
So Much Depends on the Weather
"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."
"It was raining iced pitchforks."
"To the Red county and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth."
"It was a dark and stormy night" is an oft-quoted trope; Snoopy uses it when he fancies being an author. I used it when I wrote my very first novel in fifth grade, The Chent Mansion Murders ( it was only four chapters long), and I'm not sure where I'd heard of it to begin with. From Snoopy, I guess. I'd never seen the rest of that sentence until I'd used The Google to see what it was actually from, which is a novel called Paul Clifford, published in 1830 by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, neither of which I'd heard of, other than in the context of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which is an annual contest in which people are invited to write "the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels." I'm sorry to say that we missed this year's deadline; it was April 15. I also don't know what it says about me that I just spent ten or so minutes reading last year's winners. If one can properly be said to "win" such a thing.
The second sentence is in the video game Max Payne, delivered in the noir toned, gravel bottomed voice of our narrator.
The third is the opening sentence to The Grapes of Wrath.
I've heard it said that when writing fiction, one should avoid writing about the weather. I'm sure this is one of those rules that one might break; after all, characters in a story are not operating in a formless void, typically. Weather, if you aren't being too heavy handed or purple about it, can be a deft way of setting a tone and transporting the reader into the headspace you require them in order to receive the story you're dishing out.
Kind of funny that all three quotes I picked involved rain, but pretty much everybody knows how they feel when it rains. If it's windy and rainy, you have a way of feeling. If it's sleeting, that's a whole 'nother misery. If it's a gentle rain, well that's something too. It smells different outside, when it's raining. It taps at your windows, when it's raining. You might get a headache, when it's raining.
Now look at the first line from George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four: "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." We've all lived through days like that in April; the clocks striking thirteen, though? That pulls you in. Does it mean that something is off in the order of things? Well, if you've read Nineteen Eighty-Four, it's pretty off. If you haven't read Nineteen Eighty-Four, why are you even on the Internet, unless you're going to go get a copy of it right now. Seriously. Get it and read it. You can't talk about dystopia without it (is it ironic that Google's spell check doesn't recognize "dystopia"? Maybe.)
In The Stranger by Albert Camus, our narrator ultimately shot a man because of the sun. That's simplifying things, but also not. You should probably read that book, too. Its first line doesn't have to do with the weather: "Maman died today."
Purple prose, though, that can a bad scene. You know what I mean; it's really unavoidable, if you're in the habit of reading. You've read it in this entry already, in fact: that opening line of Paul Clifford might be considered purple prose. It's overdone, and unnaturally flowery, and has made "it was a dark and stormy night" the very definition of a cliché.
Ultimately, blue skies or not, blighted lands or fertile, setting matters, and so does the weather in it. The weather needn't be a character unto itself, and probably ought not be, but I don't think it's instantly bad writing in order to include it.
"It was raining iced pitchforks."
"To the Red county and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth."
"It was a dark and stormy night" is an oft-quoted trope; Snoopy uses it when he fancies being an author. I used it when I wrote my very first novel in fifth grade, The Chent Mansion Murders ( it was only four chapters long), and I'm not sure where I'd heard of it to begin with. From Snoopy, I guess. I'd never seen the rest of that sentence until I'd used The Google to see what it was actually from, which is a novel called Paul Clifford, published in 1830 by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, neither of which I'd heard of, other than in the context of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which is an annual contest in which people are invited to write "the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels." I'm sorry to say that we missed this year's deadline; it was April 15. I also don't know what it says about me that I just spent ten or so minutes reading last year's winners. If one can properly be said to "win" such a thing.
The second sentence is in the video game Max Payne, delivered in the noir toned, gravel bottomed voice of our narrator.
The third is the opening sentence to The Grapes of Wrath.
I've heard it said that when writing fiction, one should avoid writing about the weather. I'm sure this is one of those rules that one might break; after all, characters in a story are not operating in a formless void, typically. Weather, if you aren't being too heavy handed or purple about it, can be a deft way of setting a tone and transporting the reader into the headspace you require them in order to receive the story you're dishing out.
Kind of funny that all three quotes I picked involved rain, but pretty much everybody knows how they feel when it rains. If it's windy and rainy, you have a way of feeling. If it's sleeting, that's a whole 'nother misery. If it's a gentle rain, well that's something too. It smells different outside, when it's raining. It taps at your windows, when it's raining. You might get a headache, when it's raining.
Now look at the first line from George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four: "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." We've all lived through days like that in April; the clocks striking thirteen, though? That pulls you in. Does it mean that something is off in the order of things? Well, if you've read Nineteen Eighty-Four, it's pretty off. If you haven't read Nineteen Eighty-Four, why are you even on the Internet, unless you're going to go get a copy of it right now. Seriously. Get it and read it. You can't talk about dystopia without it (is it ironic that Google's spell check doesn't recognize "dystopia"? Maybe.)
In The Stranger by Albert Camus, our narrator ultimately shot a man because of the sun. That's simplifying things, but also not. You should probably read that book, too. Its first line doesn't have to do with the weather: "Maman died today."
Purple prose, though, that can a bad scene. You know what I mean; it's really unavoidable, if you're in the habit of reading. You've read it in this entry already, in fact: that opening line of Paul Clifford might be considered purple prose. It's overdone, and unnaturally flowery, and has made "it was a dark and stormy night" the very definition of a cliché.
Ultimately, blue skies or not, blighted lands or fertile, setting matters, and so does the weather in it. The weather needn't be a character unto itself, and probably ought not be, but I don't think it's instantly bad writing in order to include it.
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