The Sincerest Form of Lawsuit Bait
By CHARLES McGRATH
By CHARLES McGRATH
Published: August 15, 2009 in The New York Times.
Jane Austen lived a sheltered, reclusive life, and when she died her family burned many of her papers. So we know next to nothing about her. From “Northanger Abbey” we can guess that she enjoyed tales of Gothic romance, but nowhere in her work is there a clue to her feelings about zombies.
It’s easy to imagine, though, that she might not be amused by Seth Grahame-Smith’s “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,” an adaptation that imagines that Elizabeth Bennet and her sisters, when they’re not looking for husbands, practice martial arts and behead flesh-eating monsters. Were she alive and litigious, like the even more private and reclusive J. D. Salinger, Austen might go to court seeking to stop publication of Mr. Grahame-Smith’s best-selling book, or at least to get a piece of the royalties.
Mr. Salinger, who is 90 and went all the way to the United States Supreme Court in the late 1980s to stop the biographer Ian Hamilton from quoting from his work, has just won another legal battle, halting the publication of “60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye,” a sequel to “The Catcher in the Rye,” by Fredrik Colting, a Swede who for some reason writes under the name J. D. California. Most accounts of Mr. Colting’s book make it sound pretty awful: Holden Caulfield, now in his 70s and stricken with urological problems, escapes from a nursing home and reunites with his sister Phoebe, who is apparently suffering from dementia. If Mr. Grahame-Smith had collaborated, he would doubtless have recommended adding a few ninjas.
It’s easy to imagine, though, that she might not be amused by Seth Grahame-Smith’s “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,” an adaptation that imagines that Elizabeth Bennet and her sisters, when they’re not looking for husbands, practice martial arts and behead flesh-eating monsters. Were she alive and litigious, like the even more private and reclusive J. D. Salinger, Austen might go to court seeking to stop publication of Mr. Grahame-Smith’s best-selling book, or at least to get a piece of the royalties.
Mr. Salinger, who is 90 and went all the way to the United States Supreme Court in the late 1980s to stop the biographer Ian Hamilton from quoting from his work, has just won another legal battle, halting the publication of “60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye,” a sequel to “The Catcher in the Rye,” by Fredrik Colting, a Swede who for some reason writes under the name J. D. California. Most accounts of Mr. Colting’s book make it sound pretty awful: Holden Caulfield, now in his 70s and stricken with urological problems, escapes from a nursing home and reunites with his sister Phoebe, who is apparently suffering from dementia. If Mr. Grahame-Smith had collaborated, he would doubtless have recommended adding a few ninjas.
But Mr. Colting’s book has nevertheless become a literary cause célèbre, with a number of legal experts, including one from The New York Times, seeking to overturn the judge’s decision. The argument is that the Colting text is “transformative”: that instead of being a mere rip-off, it adds something original and substantive to Mr. Salinger’s version. This is the same principle Alice Randall appealed to in 2001 when she fought the estate of Margaret Mitchell over her right to publish “The Wind Done Gone,” her parody of “Gone With the Wind,” told from the point of view of Scarlett’s half-sister, a slave. The case was eventually settled when Ms. Randall’s publisher agreed to make a donation to Morehouse College, in Ms. Mitchell’s hometown, Atlanta.
Something similar happened with “Lo’s Diary,” by Pia Pera, which retells Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” from Lo’s point of view and argues, incidentally, that Humbert did not kill Quilty. Dmitri Nabokov, the author’s son and a zealous protector of his father’s legacy, initially objected but then came around for a percentage of the royalties, which he donated to PEN, the writers’ group.
Ms. Pera’s book is not nearly as good as Ms. Randall’s, but like hers, it really did have a claim to being transformative. It was an implicit critique of Nabokov’s book that allowed us to see it in a different light. There are a number of prequels and sequels that do this — that genuinely enhance our appreciation of the original text. The most brilliant of all may be Jean Rhys’s “Wide Sargasso Sea,” which retells the story of “Jane Eyre” from the point of view of the first Mrs. Rochester, the madwoman in the attic. It helped give rise to new, feminist readings of a lot of Victorian fiction.
Luckily, “Jane Eyre” was in the public domain, as was “Hamlet” when John Updike wrote “Gertrude and Claudius,” a prequel that re-imagines the “Hamlet story” from the point of view of the guilty couple and explains at last why Gertrude and Claudius got together in the first place: he was master of some sweaty sexual techniques apparently unknown to his brother.
Books that are still in copyright are a more complicated challenge for the would-be writer of prequels and sequels. This is partly because a lot of money is sometimes at stake. The Mitchell estate was so fussy about protecting “Gone With the Wind” because the franchise is a gold mine. Alexandra Ripley’s “Scarlett,” an authorized sequel, was a huge best seller in 1991, even though the critics sniffed at it. Living authors, moreover, are understandably attached to their characters and creations and may not want to think of them as demented, say, or having problems with bladder control. Where do you draw the line between critique or parody and outright exploitation?
Something similar happened with “Lo’s Diary,” by Pia Pera, which retells Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” from Lo’s point of view and argues, incidentally, that Humbert did not kill Quilty. Dmitri Nabokov, the author’s son and a zealous protector of his father’s legacy, initially objected but then came around for a percentage of the royalties, which he donated to PEN, the writers’ group.
Ms. Pera’s book is not nearly as good as Ms. Randall’s, but like hers, it really did have a claim to being transformative. It was an implicit critique of Nabokov’s book that allowed us to see it in a different light. There are a number of prequels and sequels that do this — that genuinely enhance our appreciation of the original text. The most brilliant of all may be Jean Rhys’s “Wide Sargasso Sea,” which retells the story of “Jane Eyre” from the point of view of the first Mrs. Rochester, the madwoman in the attic. It helped give rise to new, feminist readings of a lot of Victorian fiction.
Luckily, “Jane Eyre” was in the public domain, as was “Hamlet” when John Updike wrote “Gertrude and Claudius,” a prequel that re-imagines the “Hamlet story” from the point of view of the guilty couple and explains at last why Gertrude and Claudius got together in the first place: he was master of some sweaty sexual techniques apparently unknown to his brother.
Books that are still in copyright are a more complicated challenge for the would-be writer of prequels and sequels. This is partly because a lot of money is sometimes at stake. The Mitchell estate was so fussy about protecting “Gone With the Wind” because the franchise is a gold mine. Alexandra Ripley’s “Scarlett,” an authorized sequel, was a huge best seller in 1991, even though the critics sniffed at it. Living authors, moreover, are understandably attached to their characters and creations and may not want to think of them as demented, say, or having problems with bladder control. Where do you draw the line between critique or parody and outright exploitation?
Read the rest at NYT.
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