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8月10日 Babble, BabbleThe trend nowadays—or has it always been?—is when writing a story, make sure it drags on and expends into an at-least-four-book series.
Theoretically, I suppose, it makes a lot of sense. Firstly, for a purely literary purpose, this would make it easier and easier for the author to decide how the characters would react to a certain incident, for, having lived through three or more novels, they are more or less real-life human beings on their own. Therefore, in a way, the author’s job switches from creation, which involves considerable rattling of the brain, to recording, which certainly is a good deal easier to manage. Secondly, on a commercial level, this would ensure the author stay on the best-selling list for quite a couple of weeks, as the success of former books would have established an army of enthusiastic and loyal fan. As a reader, even if you are not a fan, consider the uncomfortable suspense and torture an unfinished story would inflict upon you. I bet most people would be willing to pay a few bucks just to satisfy the desire for completeness. In practice, however, writing book series has its drawbacks, many drawbacks. Of course, there is no denying that series writers in the 21st century have provided well for themselves and, even more so, their publishers. But most of them lose something in the process of procuring wealth and fame. They lose their good name as a writer. Because it is not easy to write sequels. For one thing, people have greater expectations for the book. Nothing short of masterpiece would do, yet except for Mozart, who can really toss out of himself one masterpiece after another? For another, they constantly face a dilemma: should they keep to the characters “in character” and risk the readers’ boredom, or do they make the characters do things completely “out of character” and risk the readers’ faith? If they follow the first route, then when they are constantly improvising on basically the same bunch of people and the same story, eventually a pattern emerges, and believe me, nothing cools off the critics and readers more than a predicable pattern. If they brace themselves and opt for the adventurous, the hard-to-please public would then feel that these are not exactly a “series” of stories, and that they are cheated out of their favorite hero and heroine. Throughout the history of English literature—according to my limited and shallow knowledge of it, that is—there is only one writer who managed to make his “series” appealing from start to end, almost: Mark Twain. Yet, Twain’s series only contained two books: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the immortal The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the latter, except for sharing roughly the same characters, having almost nothing to do with the former. The rest of them all failed—some slightly, some dismally—at keeping up a delicious series. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes ceases to be Sherlock Holmes when he returns from the fight at the waterfall. (Of course, Doyle was conscious of his capacity and tried to kill off our beloved detective at the fight, only the plan was thwarted by the enraged public. He should have resisted public pressure. ) Louisa May Alcott’s Little Woman series is a nightmare right from the second book. Lucy Maud Montgomery, much as I love her Anne and wishes for more, failed to make her later Anne stories live up to the standards of Anne of Green Gables. C. S. Lewis almost managed to make all seven of his Narnia books interesting, except that the ending of the seventh feels so hurriedly and illogically patched up that it seriously damaged the good impression readers have harbored for the earlier stories. J. R. R. Tolkin’s Lord of the Rings series is a bore from the first letter to the last stop, and the same can be said of John Galsworthy’s Forsyte Saga. (True, these two works are profound in every respect, but you cannot say that they are very enjoyable.) J. K. Rowling dazzled the world with the first four of her Harry Potter books, luring children to sit down and read, and adults to pick up children’s books. But starting from the fifth of the series, when she has the whole world holding its breath for her to come up with a book at a speed of four-year-per-book, Harry Potter has turned from brilliant to bad, from bad to terrible, and eventually from terrible to disastrous. And now, Stephenie Meyer, whose alluring Twilight allegedly stems from a dream the authoress has, is slowly and painfully showing us how she is losing her grip with the publication of New Moon, Eclipse, and most recently, Breaking Dawn. (She seems to be contemplating a fifth, Midday Sun. I hope she gets a really good night’s sleep first.) Please do not misunderstand me, I am not criticizing. Who am I to criticize? I appreciate everything they have done to make my bookshelves full to bursting point. But honestly, I have more admiration for those who are continually creating new characters and never-heard-of-before stories. In this respect, there is no denying that Shakespeare is the boss. No one afterwards can jump out of the circle he has created. I admire those who gets good reviews not because they have bizarre stories, but because they are artists of words, like Jane Austen, like P. G. Wodehouse. It would even be desirable to get famous with one book, like Margaret Mitchell and her Gone with the Wind, and then disappear (though preferably not because of—in Mitchell’s case—death). But hey, why should our series writers stop utilizing this amazing way of getting their voices heard and making money? True, there are jerks out there like me accusing them of killing a good story; but most readers would queue up for the next book anyway. Even jerks like me queue up for the next book, because though it is just a story, though it might be badly written, it hurts not to know whether Sherlock Holmes is alive, whether Anne realizes she is in love with Gilbert, whether Harry Potter blasts the hell out of Voldemort, and whether Bella produces a houseful of the next generation of vampires. |
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