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Do certain authors seem to lose it?
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Jeffery wrote: "A newbie with a new question. Do you find your favorite authors seem to lose their edge over their lifetimes? I was reading John Irving's "Last Night On Twisted River" recently and thinking tha..."
Addendum - I didn't want to start out here criticizing another author I have the utmost respect for. I maybe should have restrained my impulse. It just happened to be something on my mind when I read this forum and seemed like a good discussion topic. (Sorry John)
J
Maybe it's you who's changing and not the author. I've returned to books I loved years ago only to wonder what I ever saw in them.
A few weeks ago, we were talking about the same thing here in the "Why ebooks are underpriced" forum. Some of us agreed that Tom Clancy is an example of a writer who has definitely lost his edge.
Patricia Sierra wrote: "Maybe it's you who's changing and not the author. I've returned to books I loved years ago only to wonder what I ever saw in them."I might agree with you, generally, but I recently reread Son of the Circus and loved it as much as ever. I actually like Last Night on Twisted River, and it gets much better after the first one hundred pages, but it lacks the liveliness his other novels have.
To remove John Irving from the discussion, I guess I have noticed with a number of well known authors that by novel five or six, something symptomatic seems to manifest e.g. They might seem to get preoccupied with some obscurity, because they are looking for something different to write about, but it loses the reader. Sometimes it seems like they are trying to break out of their repertoire style and it doesn't work. Sometimes it just seems like they've run out of things to say.
Will wrote: "A few weeks ago, we were talking about the same thing here in the "Why ebooks are underpriced" forum. Some of us agreed that Tom Clancy is an example of a writer who has definitely lost his edge."I can say that I've never read a single novel he's written. However, from what I know, he writes within a pretty limited range of topics and plots and it would seem hard not to lose your edge trying to do that for decades.
Mod
And the worst disappointments are the writers who have a stunning first few books, often because of novel subject matter, or presentation, or just skill with language. After a while, you've seen all their tricks. But their publishers won't let them try anything new.
Arthur Conan Doyle hated Sherlock Holmes and tried to kill him a couple of times - without success.Edgar Rice Burroughs got tired of Tarzan.
Janet Evonovich decided it was easier to write the same novel over and over - instead of actually making Stephanie Plum choose 1 man.
J.K. Rowling put a cap on the Harry Potter books. Smart woman!
Mod
His mom wouldn't let him. Honest. Her letter to him is classic of emotional blackmail.
Priceless - 'dearest Artie - how could you...'
It does make me wonder - what if I came up with a character that I loathed but everyone else loved?I should be so lucky at this point -eh?
Mod
It gets worse. Literature has a sort of inevitability about it, generally arising from its origins as morality tales. Certain characters just have to be severely punished, even killed. Your literary editor of yore tended to believe that he, his writer and his readers were all on the same side, that none of them would bring back a character from the dead, or spare him, for mere filthy lucre. Your modern editor is a dealmaker, more akin to a product manager at Heinz 57 Varieties than anything recognizable to literature. His accepted conventions aren't written in literature but on the bottom line. He won't let you kill a character that is popular with the new class of reader who doesn't know that literature has conventions and that civilization depends on observing them; he may not know himself if he's under forty.
So what will you do if the occasion arises? You're offered a commission for a novel with a nice advance "but only if you don't kill off the protagonist as you did in the last one". I've heard those very words.
Good point. This is getting more interesting all the time. Since I have no background in the traditional publishing world - I'm a bit of a loose cannon. Come to think of it - something like that came up once.
http://jordanscroft.blogspot.com/2009...
I don't think it's so much of losing your edge as getting stuck in a rut. As KA pointed out, Evanovich is a good example. She found a formula that worked so she just kept cracking out the same book over and over again. Barbra Cartland did the same thing. Ditto for Tom Clancy.I think this is one of the drawbacks of becoming a career author. You focus less on the craft and more on the money side. Sometimes you may be forced to print material that has more cash purposes than anything else.
I really liked Patricia Cornwell until she started phoning it in. Somewhere along the line I wonder if she got the idea that if she wrote the books badly enough they'd stop selling and her publishers would stop demanding she write more of them.This is another area where I think being an indie writer rocks. Your fans may be interested in pressuring you to keep writing the same characters over and over, but they don't have you bound by contract. If you need/want to end a character, you can.
I like that feature as well. You are also free to do as many or as few books in a series as you want.
I get bad vibes from Cornwell when I see her in interviews, but that may be partly because of the things I've read about her.I thought the first book in her series was excellent, but then I heard whispers that it was her agent's rewrite that made it so good. Maybe that's true; maybe not. Some say her drop-off in quality coincided with her switching agents. Again, I don't know if that's true.
My regard for her hit bottom when, while doing research with the FBI, she got involved with a married FBI agent assigned to assist her. That struck me as an affront to an agency that had opened its doors to her. The affair nearly led to murder when the jealous spouse (also an FBI agent) learned what was going on. I thought Cornwell had shown herself to be astonishingly unprofessional, not to mention careless with the courtesy that had been extended to her by the FBI -- a resource many suspense/thriller authors would envy and never dream of squandering.
It surprised me when ATF, despite knowing about her history with the FBI, teamed up with her to work on a short-lived television series. A friend of mine (an ATF agent) was equally baffled by that cooperative venture.
Patricia Sierra wrote: "I get bad vibes from Cornwell when I see her in interviews, but that may be partly because of the things I've read about her.I thought the first book in her series was excellent, but then I heard..."
Wow... Just wow...
Talk about life imitating art. That's how her series started, with Scarpetta (I assume a version of herself) having an affair with a married FBI agent.
I didn't know any of that about her. But I don't often spend much time reading up on the private lives of authors.
You're right! I had totally forgotten about that, Keryl. But the book came out quite a while before her affair with the agent. There's a book about the affair (which I haven't read) that appears to be told from the agent's point of view:http://www.amazon.com/Twisted-Triangl...
You might enjoy reading other things about Cornwell's life. It's pretty interesting, beginning with her upbringing in Billy Graham's household. More recently she sued a money manager, claiming tens of millions of dollars had been stolen from her.
Mod
One could wish that Life would find a better quality of Art to Imitate.
Andre Jute wrote: "One could wish that Life would find a better quality of Art to Imitate. "The first books may not be high literature, but they were good mysteries and pioneered the medical examiner/CSI sort of evidence based mystery. And they never tried to be great art, they tried to be solid entertainment and succeeded admirably. That doesn't strike me as a bad thing.
Once she started phoning it in, the quality level dropped considerably, and all of her characters went into self-destructive downward spirals that no one should want to imitate.
As for higher quality of art, well, most of the high art I've been exposed to/sought out dwelt on loneliness, anomie, social ostracism, and pain. Why would any of us chose to imitate that?
Mod
As for higher quality of art, well, most of the high art I've been exposed to/sought out dwelt on loneliness, anomie, social ostracism, and pain. Why would any of us chose to imitate that?"
That's exactly the point I'm making, Keryl, that her life appears to be in a destructive spiral and the spiral of the books reflect it. I loved the first Scarpetta books for their freshness. But I can't say I liked any of Cornwell's cop groupie books; they were embarrassing from the first.
I'm anyway not big on the idea of striving consciously for art. My idea of the creation of art is that someone aims for superior craftsmanship and that art is judged by posterity. Living critics judging living artists have a pisspoor track record. (The horrid thought arises that I may be wrong about Larsson...)
Mod
Gee. I had to look up "anomie" -- which I always assumed meant that sort of posturing self-inflicted alienation French intellectuals adhere to until someone offers them a well-paying television job -- to discover that, like most French words, it is firmly rooted in a rootless dungheap:
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anomie |ˈanəˌmē| (also anomy)
noun
lack of the usual social or ethical standards in an individual or group : the theory that high-rise architecture leads to anomie in the residents.
DERIVATIVES
anomic |əˈnämik; əˈnō-| |əˈnɑmɪk| |əˈnoʊmɪk| |əˈnɒmɪk| adjective
ORIGIN 1930s: from French, from Greek anomia, from anomos ‘lawless.’
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I had to check how it was spelled. But it was a big topic of conversation back in my college days. Where we spent absolute oodles of time talking about alienated posturing and loss of cohesive social structures. It felt like I had entire semesters of anomie in literature.
Mod
Mod
Claudine, the very first one is the one I liked. I lost interest as the series continued. Maybe that rumor I heard years ago was true; maybe her agent back then was doing a lot to shape her work. I've Googled, trying to see if that's been written about anywhere, but my searches keep coming up with notices from Google that certain material in my search terms was removed for legal reasons. Maybe Cornwell's people stay on top of the rumor via cease and desist letters. Or maybe the rumor is false.
Mod
She has said she's bipolar. That can mean a whole range of things because bipolar disorder comes in degrees. I also read something about her not being sure she's bipolar when things are running smoothly, but of course bipolars often question their diagnosis, so who knows?
Mod
Patricia Sierra wrote: "She has said she's bipolar. That can mean a whole range of things because bipolar disorder comes in degrees. I also read something about her not being sure she's bipolar when things are running smo..."You are correct about bipolar disorder. It is also amazing to see how many creative people - writers, artists, actors - have it.
I'm one of them, Will. And I wouldn't trade it for anything.
It's definitely an advantage, but I say that as someone who has the benefit of highs that are fairly mild. They're productive, not debilitating. I don't do crazy things like walk off the tops of buildings or seduce the mailman; I just feel great. As for the lows, they're so temporary I barely notice them. Only a couple have been bad; they were triggered by the death of a loved one.
Mod
I agree, but the diagnosis is still in my medical records. That's why I can identify with Cornwell when she says she doubts her diagnosis. I don't even take any meds.I'm a rapid cycler, so it's hard for people around me to spot the subtle changes that overtake me in, say, an hour's time. It was more obvious many years ago when I was working, having to sleep on a schedule and be somewhere for x-number of hours per day. I don't do well in captivity. And anyone who's in there with me doesn't like it very much either.
Mod
Genius seems to attract mental disorders, especially artistic genius.
Claudine: When I was diagnosed, my doctor gave me a book to help me feel better about the new club I was joining. It was filled with tales about famous bipolars through history who accomplished great things.I'm sorry to hear about your mom. There was a time, years ago, when I couldn't go without meds -- but I always wanted to. I'd stop them, only to discover they were necessary to keep me on an even keel (I suspect that bipolars usually think they know more than their doctors do). But I know many bipolars who never found the right chemical cocktail, so they reject them all. They're just too worn out, too beaten down to keep on searching for the combination that works for them. I also know a couple who are unwilling to give up the highs.
I wonder if your mom may have mellowed during the years you've been apart. The older I've gotten, the happier and more stable (mood-wise) I've gotten. I've read that the condition gets worse with age, but my experience has been just the opposite.
Mod
So sorry to hear that. It does sound bad -- for both of you. I certainly understand why, for your own well-being, you're handling it as you are. I'm sure I would do the same thing.
Jeffrey asked:"Do you find your favorite authors seem to lose their edge over their lifetimes?"
I find everyone seems to lose their edge over their lifetimes. The perspective you have as a poverty stricken 20 year old angry at the system is very different from the perspective you have as a financially successful 40 year old with kids to worry about.
I think partly it's that a 20 year old has greater energy and reslience than a 40 year old but a 40 year old also has many more demands on that energy unless you become an antisocial recluse (which many writers do). By the time you hit 60 even the most hard driving business people have usually come to the conclusion that playing with your grandkids is a more worthy way to spend time than conducting corporate take overs. As someone famous said - nobody dies wishing that they'd spent more time at the office.
From my own experience, I'd say that nothing dulls the edge quite like a lack of energy, an abundance of creature comforts, and too many distractions.
Alina wrote: "I find everyone seems to lose their edge over their lifetimes. The perspective you have as a poverty stricken 20 year old angry at the system is very different from the perspective you have as a financially successful 40 year old with kids to worry about."Hmm... in this context I tend to think of edge as professional competence in whatever field we happen to be discussing.
Like if Stephen King started writing cute and fuzzy bunny stories for those potential grandbabies and cutting the creepy stuff out of his horror novels, I'd say it's safe to say he's lost his edge as a horror writer. But, if the resulting works are still well written and fun to read, I wouldn't say he's lost his edge as a writer.
And honestly, having read what feels like an immense collection of works from hungry 20-somethings, I prefer the maturity that comes with some creature comforts. There's usually more depth, more understanding, and more wisdom in the works of older, more settled writers. Not to say that the young and brash don't have interesting things to say, but if I'm looking at average work quality, I'll take something written by a comfortable 30/40 year old any day.
Now, as for losing edginess, yes, that certainly happens as we get older and more comfortable. Boundary pushing is not an old man's game.
What I meant about creature comforts is that my cushy leather recliner is way more inviting than the hard-bottomed chair at the desk. It's not that too much comfort can affect one's writing so much as it can stop it. The energy drain from illness and/or age can do the same. And now with a Netflix que a mile long, the limitless content of the Internet looming before me, and a Kindle full of books to be read, distractions make it harder and harder to get into writing mode. Thank goodness I don't have a TV. When I did, I thought I had to watch the news nearly 24/7.
Patricia Sierra wrote: "What I meant about creature comforts is that my cushy leather recliner is way more inviting than the hard-bottomed chair at the desk. It's not that too much comfort can affect one's writing so much..."I know all about that. One of the good things about my favorite writing spot: no TV and no internet. (Plus they'll take care of my kids for two hours.) Most people think I'm bonkers when I say I write at the gym, but it's really a good place to work. Minimal distractions and everyone there is very nice.
I was reading John Irving's "Last Night On Twisted River" recently and thinking that it seemed kind of limp compared to many of his novels I've loved over my lifetime. I've noticed this with other authors I love as well. Definitely not all, but some people seem to age and become different writers, less firey, less ambitious, maybe.
Just looking for other opinions on this.
As a new writer who's just published his first novel, I've added this fear to my list of other pitfalls to look for while I age.
J