Posted by Mike Dennis on November 08, 2009 at 09:24:26 user MTD.
In Reply to: Coots in the North posted by andyb on November 06, 2009 at 19:28:56:
I always feel there is a danger in other authors (amateur or professional) writing sequels etc. As I have argued here before, AR's works are snapshot in time of the period he lived and wrote in. We have to assume that he also took his characters as far as he felt he could (it would appear so from his letters.)
An example of how this can not work is the current 'new' Winnie the Pooh story. With, obviously, a new author and illustrator. What is most annoying to me is that the final story in the Pooh series written by Milne is one of the best pieces of writing about the end of something and saying goodbye. Milne clearly knew how to and when to stop.
Similarly, we have recently had another volume of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book and Enid Blyton's grand-daughter has written a new Noddy story with new characters and ‘controversial’ ones dropped.
To me these are pointless exercises. Nobody, I hope, is going to write a 'new' Beethoven symphony or J S Bach concerto or paint a 'new' Turner.
You can often see where author's have, it would seem, tried to re-create success. I have recently read Peter Hoeg (the Danish author) latest book, it clearly an attempt to repeat the success of Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow. I can only assume that this was under pressure from his publisher, has his other works are completely different from that bestseller.
Yes, in my imagination I wonder sometimes about AR’s characters in the parts of the stories that are not described to us. But that’s where they stay, in my imagination.