(no subject)
I'm reading The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (this year's Orange prize winner, no less), and I cannot quite shake the feeling that it is a text of distinct fandom provenance. Where else would a smattering of added romance be accepted as a lofty reinterpretation of a source text? (I'm at chapter 8 at the moment, so she might yet add something more substantial to the The Iliad, but nothing so far: and it's not like Achilles/Patroclus is exactly a new and shocking supposition, right?) In the spirit of shippy goggles, all the justification their romance needs boils down to aesthetic observations of the Mills&Boons variety: "when our eyes held, I felt a shock run through me," "the cold shock of his beauty" & "hair lit like honey in the sun, and within it, glints of gold." Add Patroclus's conflict with his father that would be familiar to anybody with the most fleeting exposure to fanon!Draco, and you'll understand why this novel reads as any fandom classic (and not the freshest one at that).
Also, the era is described with all the anvilicious elegance as an 8-yo boy is made to make the following pronouncements: "They might permit a king to burn their fields or rape their daughters, as long as payment was made. But you did not touch a man's sons ... We all knew the rules; we clung to them to avoid the anarchy that was always a hairsbreadth away," or "In our day, death was preferable [to exile]." One might imagine an 80-yo speaking of "In our day," but somebody 10 times younger?
So, about The Song of Achilles's earlier reincarnation as fanfic: am I right, or am I right?
Also, the era is described with all the anvilicious elegance as an 8-yo boy is made to make the following pronouncements: "They might permit a king to burn their fields or rape their daughters, as long as payment was made. But you did not touch a man's sons ... We all knew the rules; we clung to them to avoid the anarchy that was always a hairsbreadth away," or "In our day, death was preferable [to exile]." One might imagine an 80-yo speaking of "In our day," but somebody 10 times younger?
So, about The Song of Achilles's earlier reincarnation as fanfic: am I right, or am I right?