There are many ways to continue a series after its author’s death. One is to wait a long time, until the original material has achieved classic status, and then find an established heavyweight willing to step up, like a great actor taking on his third King Lear. Examples would be John Banville reviving Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, or Jill Paton Walsh giving us more of Dorothy L. Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey. As readers we approach such attempts cautiously, with style points and degrees of difficulty in mind, as if we were judges at an Olympic diving competition, and therefore, however good the execution may be, these books will always remain to some extent interesting curiosities.
Another way is to continue as soon as possible, to give the newly bereft reader the sheer joy of another story with much loved characters and familiar scenarios. There are many such examples, but the all-time champ could be Robert Ludlum, who seems to have published nearly two dozen books in his lifetime, and considerably more than that after its untimely conclusion.
No comments:
Post a Comment