I might not be able to fully articulate or justify this feeling of betrayal, but I feel it keenly all the same. As readers, writers, critics, what do you think? Am I overreacting, discounting the author's interest? Is this just not a question most readers have occasion to confront? If you were Stephen King, would you have done it?
This is an interesting question, and I haven't read the King Dark Tower series (I have an unfortunate allergy to Westerns, and it was called The Gunslinger. And yes, if it weren't for andpuff and the manager at the store, I would have missed Firefly, which would have served my narrow little reading tastes right).
My first published novel will be reprinted in September of next year. I'm almost terrified of it, to be honest -- I haven't reread the book in years, and I'm certain there are things I wouldn't do now, and there are things I would do entirely differently now. I don't hate the story -- but I was younger and knew less, and because I wrote it, what I see first and foremost are the errors, the things that show cracks in the craftsmanship of the whole.
But... having said that? There are people who still write me to say they loved that book. Whatever flaws I perceive in it, or will, they don't see. They see the heart of it, the thing that drove me to write it -- but not the flaws that I'll see. I've had people tell me they were upset by the end of the fourth novel because they knew there wouldn't be any more of them, and they almost didn't want to finish it because of that.
And mine didn't have those long gaps between volumes.
Digression, digression, and too much Me. If I were to have to write in that universe, if I were to somehow return to it, and I were given the chance to change things, I think I would almost have to, to keep going. Because it wouldn't be a finished thing, to me, anymore; it wouldn't have that certain sense of completion. I would have re-opened the world, and the story, and while doing that? I think the story would have different layers and different meanings or subtext than it once had. Granted, King always intended to write more. But a lot of years passed between the first and the last, and I'm sure that has to be part of it.
Retcon, to my understanding, can also involve wholesale shifts into an alternate reality (or it felt that way in comics, which is where I first heard the term used widely). But your use is more in keeping with how it's generally done.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2004-11-19 08:37 pm (UTC)This is an interesting question, and I haven't read the King Dark Tower series (I have an unfortunate allergy to Westerns, and it was called The Gunslinger. And yes, if it weren't for
My first published novel will be reprinted in September of next year. I'm almost terrified of it, to be honest -- I haven't reread the book in years, and I'm certain there are things I wouldn't do now, and there are things I would do entirely differently now. I don't hate the story -- but I was younger and knew less, and because I wrote it, what I see first and foremost are the errors, the things that show cracks in the craftsmanship of the whole.
But... having said that? There are people who still write me to say they loved that book. Whatever flaws I perceive in it, or will, they don't see. They see the heart of it, the thing that drove me to write it -- but not the flaws that I'll see. I've had people tell me they were upset by the end of the fourth novel because they knew there wouldn't be any more of them, and they almost didn't want to finish it because of that.
And mine didn't have those long gaps between volumes.
Digression, digression, and too much Me. If I were to have to write in that universe, if I were to somehow return to it, and I were given the chance to change things, I think I would almost have to, to keep going. Because it wouldn't be a finished thing, to me, anymore; it wouldn't have that certain sense of completion. I would have re-opened the world, and the story, and while doing that? I think the story would have different layers and different meanings or subtext than it once had. Granted, King always intended to write more. But a lot of years passed between the first and the last, and I'm sure that has to be part of it.
Retcon, to my understanding, can also involve wholesale shifts into an alternate reality (or it felt that way in comics, which is where I first heard the term used widely). But your use is more in keeping with how it's generally done.