The respectability of sequels (et al)

[sheenaghpugh]

From Susan Hill's blog, a heartfelt account of the animosity she incurred for writing - at the request of the estate of Daphne du Maurier, who knew her and liked her work - a sequel to Rebecca. Her words are familiar to anyone who's done the Defence of Fanfiction thing:

Not only had I always loved the novel, I knew what happened to the characters after it was over - I had often, often thought about them. The sequel is a perfectly respectable and very long-standing literary form. [...] I was accused of taking someone else`s characters because I couldn`t be bothered to create my own [...]

And this was with as near to authorial permission as you could get. Some of the hostility seems to have been specifically because she got paid, but the abusiveness about lack of that wildly overrrated characteristic, "originality", is something unpaid ficcers get too. I do wish people would lose this hang-up about "original characters". Do they seriously think any author, living or dead, has ever "made up" a character? They are amalgams of oneself, one's friends, relatives and enemies and, very possibly, one's fictional influences too. And whether they work on the page matters a whole lot more than where they came from.

Comments

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I wonder whether there's an inverse correlation between the amount of snob-flak sequel writers receive and the degree of distance (stylistic and other kinds) from the original they aim for?

People don't generally diss, say, Wide Sargasso Sea, Things Fall Apart, Grendel or Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead for their lack of originality. (Admittedly all these are rewritings rather than sequels, which may make a difference, though I'm not sure it does.) Presumably part of the reason is that they take a critical stand, or at least make a perspective-giving triangulation, on the originary text, rather than trying to extend it in the same dimension, as it were. Even so, they are no less 'parasitic' than more faithful sequels, if one wants to put it that way.

Personally I don't want to put it that way. Perhaps it's growing up in the Renaissance, but I've always been bemused by the post-Romantic fetish for originality over imitation, and especially by the idea that these are opposed qualities. But I don't seem to have time or brain room just at the moment to take this thought further...

[reapermum.livejournal.com]

Are we looking at Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe or another one? Because I didn't know that was a sequel otherwise.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Actually, that was a very poor example. But I have that book filed somewhere in the lumber-room of my mind as having a relationship with Heart of Darkness analogous to that of Wide Sargasso Sea with Jane Eyre. If it does, though, it's probably at far too abstract a level to be relevant to this conversation. Please ignore!