So you may have heard of Eragon by the teen writer Christopher Paolini. It topped the bestseller list and spawned a movie most notable for special effects
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Re: Teenage WastelandlockholmApril 15 2007, 14:30:51 UTC
Ooops, sorry. In my efforts to be compact I thought "teen writer" conveyed his age without considering it might simply convey his genre. Yeah, he's still a kid, though by the time he wrote the afterword to this latest book he was 21.
My idealistic hangup on this particular point is that I can't understand why anyone would realize that their stuff was a derivative mess and then keep moving forward with it.
The clear allusion to the famous line in Star Wars is cute. It become hilarious when juxtaposed with impression that the entire story is borrowed from Star Wars, and that one line is a cherry placed delicately on a sundae in danger of its own toppings (ok, this metaphor is retarded). If his writing is calculated, though, it becomes mocking - look what I can get away with!
Maybe he says to himself every night: all fantasy is derivative. I wonder if all this acclaim for a reasonably crappy set of books will allow him to view them with an unbiased eye as he ages. Maybe he'll still be able to learn from them so that his inevitable Paolini's Lisramillion will never come out.
My copy of Hero with a Thousand Faces has Luke Skywalker on itrobertmaprilApril 15 2007, 15:58:26 UTC
To be fair, a lot of fantasy is fairly derivative. A lot, if not a majority of them could be set in Middle-Earth without much tweaking. Which isn't to say they're not enjoyable. There's mention of the tales of Garion and Sparhawk below and I enjoyed the hell out of those books. And also to be fair, Star Wars itself is a hodgepodge of various influences: the first movie is essentially The Hidden Fortress in space. But this wholesale ripping off of lines speaks to me of a cynicism on the part of the publishers and an underdeveloped sense of self to say the least of the author.
Essentially Star Wars, and The Belgariad and the Shannara books and the Eldest Trilogy and the Ring trilogy and to some extent Harry Potter and even Bridge of Birds follow the same story that's been told since Sumeria and Greece: young man living a pastoral existence gets co-opted for a Quest by Forces Beyond His Control, traveling into the wilderness and learning things about himself, usually encountering his father. And he always fights a monster. One of three things happens: hero defeats the monster, hero is defeated by the monster, hero becomes the monster.
That having been said, if Norman Mailer wrote a book, let's say a hilariously ill-advised sequel to The Naked and the Dead, in which two characters were to, say, have this following line of dialogue, would anyone let him get away with it?
MartinezSir, the possibility of successfully navigating a Filipino brothel is approximately 3,720 to 1. CroftNever tell me the odds.
Re: My copy of Hero with a Thousand Faces has Luke Skywalker on itlockholmApril 15 2007, 16:24:39 UTC
Certainly, a large amount of fantasy is fairly derivative, and all of us probably have a different threshold for that point where we say, "Ah! an original spark enlivens this story." Most of us probably also agree that Eragon does not meet this criterion and Tolkein does, but we might differ on, say, Robert Jordan. Well, we the three of us might not, but there are an army of fans out there who presumably do. I guess the point is that while it's difficult to pin down exactly where the threshold of originality lies, the refrain "all fantasy/literature/etc is derivative" simply doesn't fully capture a reader's experience.
Re: Teenage WastelandblindauroraApril 16 2007, 02:08:35 UTC
The clear allusion to the famous line in Star Wars is cute. It become hilarious when juxtaposed with impression that the entire story is borrowed from Star Wars, and that one line is a cherry placed delicately on a sundae in danger of its own toppings (ok, this metaphor is retarded). If his writing is calculated, though, it becomes mocking - look what I can get away with!
I have not read the books or seen the movie for the reasons stated above, but it could be that the author is not aspiring to literary greatness. Think Peirs Anthony and the Xanth novels.
My idealistic hangup on this particular point is that I can't understand why anyone would realize that their stuff was a derivative mess and then keep moving forward with it.
The clear allusion to the famous line in Star Wars is cute. It become hilarious when juxtaposed with impression that the entire story is borrowed from Star Wars, and that one line is a cherry placed delicately on a sundae in danger of its own toppings (ok, this metaphor is retarded). If his writing is calculated, though, it becomes mocking - look what I can get away with!
Maybe he says to himself every night: all fantasy is derivative. I wonder if all this acclaim for a reasonably crappy set of books will allow him to view them with an unbiased eye as he ages. Maybe he'll still be able to learn from them so that his inevitable Paolini's Lisramillion will never come out.
Reply
Essentially Star Wars, and The Belgariad and the Shannara books and the Eldest Trilogy and the Ring trilogy and to some extent Harry Potter and even Bridge of Birds follow the same story that's been told since Sumeria and Greece: young man living a pastoral existence gets co-opted for a Quest by Forces Beyond His Control, traveling into the wilderness and learning things about himself, usually encountering his father. And he always fights a monster. One of three things happens: hero defeats the monster, hero is defeated by the monster, hero becomes the monster.
That having been said, if Norman Mailer wrote a book, let's say a hilariously ill-advised sequel to The Naked and the Dead, in which two characters were to, say, have this following line of dialogue, would anyone let him get away with it?
MartinezSir, the possibility of successfully navigating a Filipino brothel is approximately 3,720 to 1.
CroftNever tell me the odds.
Prolly not.
Reply
Also, awesome.
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I have not read the books or seen the movie for the reasons stated above, but it could be that the author is not aspiring to literary greatness. Think Peirs Anthony and the Xanth novels.
Reply
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