A numbers game?
I guess for some it really is just all about the numbers.
How many words can you write in one day, how many books in a year?
How many different projects can you juggle and keep up in the air at once?
And how many books can you sign in one sitting?
Whatever happened to writing A good BOOK? Does everything have to start out as a trilogy or series these days?
I'm sorry, but there IS a relation between quantity and time and quality.
I guess I'm just a hand-tailored bug in an off-the-rack world....
How many words can you write in one day, how many books in a year?
How many different projects can you juggle and keep up in the air at once?
And how many books can you sign in one sitting?
Whatever happened to writing A good BOOK? Does everything have to start out as a trilogy or series these days?
I'm sorry, but there IS a relation between quantity and time and quality.
I guess I'm just a hand-tailored bug in an off-the-rack world....
posted by SandChigger | 9:55 PM
4 Comments:
It is the way all things are going. Even in my own preferred entertainment medium, video games, the business aspect has taken charge. Games are no longer made to be fun, they are made as mainstream as possible in order to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, and any game outside of this is shunned (i.e. Okami, Viewtiful Joe, Psychonauts...). Books are now made to make money, so the more books you can write the better, plus if those books can appeal to any random guy on the street, so much the better.
Way of the world, what can we do, right? :)
Well, maybe there's nothing much we can do to change or stop it, but that doesn't mean we have to like it.
OR stop bitching about it. ;)
Someone got right snippy when I suggested that the level of the writing in the new Dune books had been lowered to appeal to a wider audience. But it seems rather obvious that that is exactly what they have done.
And what purpose is served by repetition and recap if not to allow easier entry to "any random guy on the street".
I wouldn't mind all of this as much if they were just a little bit more honest about it. Making money may not be the main consideration, but it's disingenuous to pretend it's not an important one. Writing series books and padding page counts with repetition may be standard industry practice now, but don't try to tell me that what is produced as a result is great literature or even good writing.
Grrrr. I'm in a mood now....
Not to mention the numerous inconsistancies in the work as well. I mean, fine, if you want to dumb things down by repeating them and making them more explicit (this is typically written off as "not Frank's style"), then go for it. But don't change the canon and don't contradict what the master himself wrote--WHETHER OR NOT THAT CONTRADICTION APPEARS IN THE "NOTES." Thats my opinion....
Ah, but THERE IS ONLY ONE TRUE INCONSISTENCY, remember. You're just not reading closely enough or don't have an open mind!
After all, the whole Jessica-Leto meeting scenario contradicts ONLY ONE SENTENCE in Dune. AND it was written by Frank Herbert himself. He must have known what he was doing. And it's so much more EXCITING! (Even without the use of unlimited SFX. Did you see where he used that one again in discussing The Last Days of Pom...er, Krypton? Whooey.)
I suppose I should get my bulbous abdomen in motion and write him back. Not sure there's much point, though....
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