Originality and the Zeitgeist
I went to pinch hit as a sub today (hey, I desperately need that fifty smackeroos) and came home to zip through the bazillion posts gathered while I was gone. Stumbled to a halt when I came across this post by Charles Butler as the latest in the blog of a group of writers for kids, "An Awfully Big Blog Adventure."
The only bit I'll take issue with is As for J. K. Rowling, her books only make sense when placed in the context of the genre of the boarding school story which might be true for UK readers, but I think that Harry Potter reinvented the boarding school story for most American readers. It had pretty much vanished here, but kids got right into it, maybe because they'd been exposed to plenty of summer camp TV, movies, and books: the parents are gone, the kids develop a society of their own in the new environment, where teachers/counselors may or may not form part of the antagonists' list. But it's all about us against them on the kid level.
The zeitgeist thing is really weird. Of course many have pointed out over and over again that the structural bones of Harry Potter are pretty worn territory--orphan at a school, everything gets resolved by the end of the school year, then everything starts over the next year, including the Big Bad popping up to be the villain yet again. There are a ton of orphans-at-magic school stories that preceded Potter. Heck, I wrote one myself at age 17 (this was in 1968), which later got published as Wren to the Rescue--though the magic school part is minimal. My point is, at age 17, I wasn't exactly coming up with wildly original material--the form of that story arose out of reading I've thoroughly forgotten now.
But names and tropes showing up in stories by authors who had no contact? What's all that about? What triggered the similarities off in those authors? Then there are the bits of much-read and reread stories in an author's youth that went forgotten, but resurrects as something barely recognizable later. Like, say, the idea that the fae, or elves, cannot create, unlike humans. Someone reads a newly published book and howls, "You lifted that idea from Perilous Gard!" To which the author might say, "I never read Perilous Gard,--but I think I might have gotten it Writer X, but I changed everything." It turns out Writer X did read Perilous Gard when she was a teen in the seventies.
Is it possible to be truly original? What about those who say (and rightly so) "Give ten authors a story idea, and you're likely to get ten radically different stories." I agree if those ten authors tend to write works that are radically different. Some writers are working in very familiar territory, not only using tropes popular in a subgenre, but typical characters, typical character arcs, expected resolutions. Then there are writers who take those tropes and play 52 pickup. They are all engaging in literary dialog in their own ways.
The only bit I'll take issue with is As for J. K. Rowling, her books only make sense when placed in the context of the genre of the boarding school story which might be true for UK readers, but I think that Harry Potter reinvented the boarding school story for most American readers. It had pretty much vanished here, but kids got right into it, maybe because they'd been exposed to plenty of summer camp TV, movies, and books: the parents are gone, the kids develop a society of their own in the new environment, where teachers/counselors may or may not form part of the antagonists' list. But it's all about us against them on the kid level.
The zeitgeist thing is really weird. Of course many have pointed out over and over again that the structural bones of Harry Potter are pretty worn territory--orphan at a school, everything gets resolved by the end of the school year, then everything starts over the next year, including the Big Bad popping up to be the villain yet again. There are a ton of orphans-at-magic school stories that preceded Potter. Heck, I wrote one myself at age 17 (this was in 1968), which later got published as Wren to the Rescue--though the magic school part is minimal. My point is, at age 17, I wasn't exactly coming up with wildly original material--the form of that story arose out of reading I've thoroughly forgotten now.
But names and tropes showing up in stories by authors who had no contact? What's all that about? What triggered the similarities off in those authors? Then there are the bits of much-read and reread stories in an author's youth that went forgotten, but resurrects as something barely recognizable later. Like, say, the idea that the fae, or elves, cannot create, unlike humans. Someone reads a newly published book and howls, "You lifted that idea from Perilous Gard!" To which the author might say, "I never read Perilous Gard,--but I think I might have gotten it Writer X, but I changed everything." It turns out Writer X did read Perilous Gard when she was a teen in the seventies.
Is it possible to be truly original? What about those who say (and rightly so) "Give ten authors a story idea, and you're likely to get ten radically different stories." I agree if those ten authors tend to write works that are radically different. Some writers are working in very familiar territory, not only using tropes popular in a subgenre, but typical characters, typical character arcs, expected resolutions. Then there are writers who take those tropes and play 52 pickup. They are all engaging in literary dialog in their own ways.