Posted by Forrest Brownell on September 24, 1997 at 00:27:35:
In Reply to: NO NO NO NO NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! posted by Peter Nankai no kyofu on September 23, 1997 at 03:13:43:
Whilst Peter's eloquently understated suggestion that Arthur Ransome's works
should be regarded as immutable artifacts is understandable, it is also naive.
All literature is, at base, derivative, and none is sacrosanct. In time, if
interest in Ransome's themes and locales survives, his stories will be reworked
and rewritten for new audiences. Shakespeare borrowed heavily, after all, and
often from contemporaries. He completed others' unfinished tales, added
incident, rewrote and embellished shamelessly. We can only be thankful that the
censor in Shakespeare's time was not so uncompromising as Peter would have us be
today.
Nevertheless, I should not applaud any attempt to rewrite the completed tales. I
was, in fact, unhappy to see the small changes made to Ransome's text in some
current editions in order to conform to modern sensibilities, and I, too, found
many of the scriptwriter's inventions in the Coot Club and Big Six films
irritating. That said, however, I can see no reason why a gifted writer with a
good 'ear' should not undertake to complete the unfinished work whose surviving
fragment we now style Coots in the North (that name itself, of course, is
another's invention) -- after having obtained the necessary permissions from
Ransome's estate, of course.
We should also remember that, although there is certainly nothing 'wrong' with
Coots in the North as it now stands, it, too, is in some degree 'artificial': it
is, in fact, a post-mortem collage of Ransome's drafts and notes. Should a
modern writer someday undertake to complete the story so well begun, I will
welcome the opportunity to read the resulting tale; I will not, however, insist
that Peter join me.
As to fibreglass copies of SWALLOW : Why not, indeed, if by that means children
and adults who might otherwise never know the joy of sailing a small boat could
be given the chance to do so? I prefer the look and feel of wooden boats, to be
sure, but I'd have sailed a tin tea tray when I was a boy, and been glad of the
opportunity.
Forrest