Prejudice and Pride?

[danalwyn]

I just came back from a trip to Fermilab (to give a talk at the Collaboration meeting), and I noticed, on the plane from Phoenix, that the woman next to me was reading a book.

Now, I, like most readers, have the ability to judge the genre of a book based on the cover. Sometimes it's obvious, like spaceships, and pirates, and kilt-wearing Scotsmen with their shirts unbuttoned, but sometimes, it's more subtle. It's in the way the words are written, the expressions that are allowed on the face, even the way that the author's name appears in conjunction with the title. This set off a bit of the romance warning for me, but also another sensation that I rarely experience in regular life. The cover illustration was simply drawn, there was no information on the binding, or on the cover other than the title and the author; only the bareness of the book's cover testified to its uniqueness.

Although it is always bad to judge a book by its cover, this one was screaming Vanity Press.

I don't see Vanity Press work on a day to day basis, so this aroused my curiosity. I caught a peak of the back as she was getting off the plane, and discovered that she was reading Pride and Prejudice fanfic. This Pride and Prejudice fanfic to be precise. Once my access to the internet was restored, I quickly discovered that this author has already produced other various works of P&P fanfic. And furthermore, there seems to be a whole industry devoted to the concept.

Now, I shouldn't find this very odd, considering that my choice of literature has never exactly been accused of good taste (in fact, Pride and Prejudice fanfic may be considerably closer to true literature by virtue of association), and furthermore I try not to malign other people's choices, but does anybody besides me find this vaguely disturbing? As if a piece of the internet, where I normally find fanfiction, had intruded on real life?

I don't know why this bothers me. Perhaps it's just because all those times when I was telling people to try making their pseudo-fanfic into an original work, I was apparently giving them the wrong advice.

Comments

[silverjackal.livejournal.com]

I think this is partially a matter of coincidence. You just happened to encounter a "fan" off the internet, which is bound to occur at some point, since there are many fans of many things -- it may just not be obvious in real life.

In regards to the writing, though, "fanfiction" as pastiche or genre has long been acceptable for certain things. Classics such as Sherlock Holmes and H. G. Wells have long had imitations and subsequent additions which have been received by the public with an interest that often outstripped the quality of the pastiche. I imagine Pride and Prejudice would fall into this category as well. For that matter this sort of thing is what likely contributed to the "creation" of certain classics, such as the stories of Robin Hood, and the Arthurian cycle, and possibly even the Iliad and the Odyssey. On the other side of the quality issue, there are all of the endless tie in novels for various movies, television series, or fantasy/science fiction stories. The vast majority of that body of work will be almost instantly forgotten, because it doesn't have any merit of its' own. So the question of quality writing, and the presumable ultimate goal of being published, is a question of writing *well* -- whether it's pastiche or original fiction. In my opinion, the issue with pseudo-fanfiction is not that it is set in someone else's world, using someone else's characters, but that this is taken as an excuse by the authors to not produce solid characterization and plot in their own right.

[danalwyn.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure where this sits on the scale, being more of a "what if" than it is a sequel or a conclusion, but I have to say that I wonder how easy it is to make a story using someone else's characters. It always feels a bit dishonest to me, even when licensed, to create a story using someone else's characters and someone else's universe.

Oh well, just differences I suppose.