Back & Forth

Not like anybody particularly cares, but I hate retellings -- could be fairytale retellings or reworkings of past literary giants.

Retellings annoy the hell out of me. They feel like lazy copouts -- a way of securing a degree of buy-in without having earned it on your own merits:

"It's ALICE IN WONDERLAND but from the POV of the Cheshire Cat!"

"It's MOBY-DICK but everyone aboard the Pequod is female -- I call it MOBY-DICKLESS!"

"It's BLUEBEARD, but instead, he's got a mustache! And he's a glam rocker living in New York City during the 1970s."

Now, obviously, writers will draw inspiration from previous works. But retellings are just so lame. Come up with something new, something original, instead of coattail-riding on past works written by better writers.

My scalding-hot take on that is that it affords less-imaginative souls an opportunity to market a work to less-daring readers who are frightened by new and unfamiliar things, and long for that literary reassurance which comes from the association from the superior work.

Seriously, when has a retelling exceeded the source material parasitizing it? It doesn't happen, so it's really a gimmick to try to gin up sales in an ever-more-uncertain literary marketplace.

Maybe it's my punk fogey self coming out yet again, but be bold, be original, be different, be daring. Do something different, for a change.

Sidenote: I know that people can write whatever they want, people can read what they like -- but I can also express my contempt for the retellers out there. Let's see what original work you can do. Push yourself and your readers, instead of playing literary dress-up with borrowed/stolen treasures.