On some French Fashionable Novels, with a plea for romances in general

(from The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh by William Makepeace Thackeray)

Tea-parties are the same all the world over; with the exception that, with the French, there are more lights and prettier dresses; and with us, a mighty deal more tea in the pot. There is, however, a cheap and delightful way of travelling, that a man may perform in his easy-chair, without expense of passports or post-boys. On the wings of a novel, from the next circulating library, he sends his imagination a-gadding, and gains acquaintance with people and manners whom he could not hope otherwise to know. Twopence a volume bears us whithersoever we will;—back to Ivanhoe and Coeur de Lion, or to Waverley and the Young Pretender, along with Walter Scott; up the heights of fashion with the charming enchanters of the silver-fork school; or, better still, to the snug inn-parlor, or the jovial tap-room, with Mr. Pickwick and his faithful Sancho Weller. I am sure that a man who, a hundred years hence should sit down to write the history of our time, would do wrong to put that great contemporary history of “Pickwick” aside as a frivolous work. It contains true character under false names; and, like “Roderick Random,” an inferior work, and “Tom Jones” (one that is immeasurably superior), gives us a better idea of the state and ways of the people than one could gather from any more pompous or authentic histories.

The literary remix – problem or not?

This thing of reversioning other people’s books is so complex and varied, it’s hard to have a consistent opinion on it. If it was down to me I wouldn’t want a rule barring all books of this kind but for each work to be assessed on a case-by-case basis. If it had genuine merit in its own right, let it pass; if not, then not. Only, who would decide?

Once upon a time, good taste or a good editor took care of this sort of thing and saved the rest of us from exposure to it. Now, where is either when you want them? That just isn’t how it works any more. Self publishing and web publishing leave the decision in the hands of the punters, who vote with their cash or their cursors.

But if JD Salinger cared enough to sue over ‘Sixty years later: Coming through the rye’*, the recent unauthorised “sequel” to his classic ‘The Catcher in the Rye’, then part of me is glad he won. And part of me wonders, would it have sunk without trace had he not bothered? The supposed sequel features as central characters one Mr Caulfield and one Mr Salinger, and its writer, perhaps as a marketing aid, took as his pseudonym the name JD California. It may be unfashionable to stand up for copyright just at the moment, but without wading around in the mire of side-taking I can say this – what is so wrong with originating your own creative work and taking your chances on whether it sells?

This applies as much to music as to fiction. So much ‘new’ music consciously emulates sounds that are 15, 20, or 30 years old (mostly between 27 and 32 years old just at the moment, but it all depends on what is selling). The trouble is, it can be hard to know if you’re listening to a recent remix or to the original. It is one thing to ‘stand on the shoulders of giants’, another to lazily piggyback-ride them to death.

Death is of course an important consideration. It is a very fine thing for publishers if the author whose work is being revisited [or remixed, or mashed up, or perhaps as some might say, ripped off] is dead. Ideally they will be very dead, so dead in fact that copyright is no longer a concern; this reduces the risk of a court case somewhat. So, Quirk books will follow up the literary mash-up ‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’ with ‘Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters’ — ‘60% Austen and 40% tentacled chaos’. Other publishers have joined the goldrush and plan to release titles such as ‘Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter’ (subtitled ‘She Loved Her Country; She Hated Demons’) and ‘I am Scrooge: A Zombie Story for Christmas’. See the Guardian for more.

The Salinger case proves that when borrowing heavily from another writer’s work, it’s not enough for the author concerned to be merely old and reclusive. They really do have to be dead. And preferably, they should not have a powerful estate taking care of how posterity perceives their work.

What would reduce the risk further, I’d suggest, both to publishers and perhaps to readers, is for the writer to bring enough new material to the project for it to genuinely “belong” to them as author. For example reviewers who decribed the 2007 Booker shortlisted novel Mr Pip as “Lloyd Jones’ imaginative riff on a classic Dickens novel”, did so safe in the knowledge that Great Expectations was just one of the many flavours running through the novel. Lloyd Jones did not rely upon it so heavily that his readers needed to have read Great Expectations in order for Mr Pip to make sense.

Rendered as a percentage? Hard to say, but not more than 2 or 3%.

Personally I’m not sure a 60:40 ratio of old to new is fair, even if on the face of it, it’s legal. The author (or publisher) doing the borrowing ought to bring more collateral to the equation than that.

Jane Austen with zombies

When I said what came next might be something Jane Austen would hate, I didn’t mean the video in that last post — which I have a feeling she wouldn’t really object to. No, I meant Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which people may have noticed in their bookshops recently. It is anyone’s guess how Jane Austen would react were she brought back to life to comment (the most annoying aspect, from her point of view, might be that the writer responsible has probably minted more than she ever made from the sale of her own books). But I suppose I’m slightly concerned that if this is a hit, we’ll be treated to a ‘literary’ diet of zombies with everything (which here means, everything classic with expired copyright). Like chips with everything, that could be a little dull. The one person I know who has a copy of this book is saving it for when she goes on holiday, so if you’ve read it or have strong views, do get in touch.

Long fiction

So yeah, I did finish ‘Solo’, in spite of the hefty page count. It’s billed as a hundred years in one life, but this doesn’t quite feel like what you get. Still… What I like about this novel is, it’s not afraid to be a little bit weird, to take an idea and run with it, maybe go a bit over the top here and there. Its anarchic structure means you sort of end up with two books – different yet connected, flipsides of the same tune in different styles.