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Jun. 17th, 2018 09:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatMy parents are reading The President is Missing, and all reviews on it. Apparently there's one that my father enjoyed in The New Yorker, which slams the book ...although reading the review gave me a headache. I posted to FB then deleted after making it half-way through.
Review of the President is Missing by the New Yorker
Key take-aways:
* Bill Clinton, who can write, has hooked up with James Patterson, who can’t, but whose works have sold more than three hundred and seventy-five million copies, most of them to happy and contented customers for whom good writing would only get in the way. This unlikely pact has resulted in “The President Is Missing” (Knopf and Little, Brown), which we must, not without reservations, describe as a thriller. Get a load of this: “The stun grenades detonate, producing a concussive blast of 180 decibels.” A hundred and eighty, mark you, and not a decibel less! If that isn’t thrilling, I can’t imagine what is.
*Collaboration is a murky trade, and it covers quite a range. Whether you’re siding with the enemy in Nazi-occupied France or laying out the lyrics to “Edelweiss” so that Richard Rodgers can devise a tune to match, you’re a collaborator. But no joining of forces is more difficult to fathom than the partnership between two writers. Writing, like dying, is one of those things that should be done alone or not at all. In each case, loved ones may hover around and tender their support, but, in the end, it’s up to you. So, when two writers decide to merge, what do they actually do?
Well, I’ve heard rumors of novelist couples who produce alternate chapters: one for you, one for me. A tidy scheme for twin souls but otherwise, assuredly, a prelude to divorce. Also, how can you guarantee that the cracks won’t show between your styles? John Fletcher, a popular and gifted playwright, once hooked up with some old slacker named Shakespeare to bring us “Henry VIII,” which was first performed in 1613, and linguistic analysis can propose, scene by scene, who delivered which slices of the cake. (Fletcher, who liked to get by with a little help from his friends, later conjured a play with three other writers. I bet that was peaceful.) Even so, nobody is sure about the sequence of events—whether Fletcher rounded off what Shakespeare couldn’t be bothered to complete, or whether the play was genuinely conceived in perfect harmony, with one guy sitting on the other’s lap, their fingers interlaced around the quill.
This is true. I rarely like collaborations. Something is always lost. They only work with plays or screenplays, and rarely there as well. Fanfic collaborations -- I've noticed are rather horrid, including the one I tried. Why? No one can agree on the plot. And if they do? It's paint-by-numbers, because it almost has to be for everyone to fall into line. They can be a lot of fun to write -- but painful to read. Writing is a solo profession not a group activity, unless you are a television writer.
*Yet the puzzle remains: why James Patterson? Why not Daniel Silva? It’s understandable that Clinton, with limited time on his hands, might well scout for a partner; you really need a Sundance Kid, if you want to be a Butch. Clinton could have taken his pick from the ranks of American novelists, though whether Don DeLillo would have leaped at the chance is open to debate. Personally, I’d have plumped for Martin Cruz Smith, who has demonstrated, since the first two sentences of “Gorky Park” (1981), that the English language lies at his command, whereas Patterson is helplessly at its mercy, as even the briefest browse of his corpus will confirm. Still, what a corpus: almost two hundred books to date, of which sixty-six have headed the Times best-seller list. In 2016, Forbes estimated his net worth at around seven hundred million dollars, a sum that would have made even Marcus Aurelius ditch the Stoicism and buy a yacht. If Clinton, like all aspiring novelists, yearned for his book to sell, he chose the right wingman. It could be called “The President Is Cashing In.”
But the gods are just, and although they denied the gift of literary grace to Patterson, they bestowed on him an even rarer skill. As a collaborator, he’s the top. Barely can he sketch an outline without reaching for a sidekick. So numerous are his assistants that one has to ask, less in snotty disapproval than in ontological awe, how many of Patterson’s books are actually “his,” and to what extent he is a writer at all, as opposed to a trademark or a brand. Were he to unearth a distant ancestor, in cinquecento Florence, whose output is mostly attributed to “the workshop of Giacomo Paterfilio,” no one would be surprised.
Review of the President is Missing by the New Yorker
Key take-aways:
* Bill Clinton, who can write, has hooked up with James Patterson, who can’t, but whose works have sold more than three hundred and seventy-five million copies, most of them to happy and contented customers for whom good writing would only get in the way. This unlikely pact has resulted in “The President Is Missing” (Knopf and Little, Brown), which we must, not without reservations, describe as a thriller. Get a load of this: “The stun grenades detonate, producing a concussive blast of 180 decibels.” A hundred and eighty, mark you, and not a decibel less! If that isn’t thrilling, I can’t imagine what is.
*Collaboration is a murky trade, and it covers quite a range. Whether you’re siding with the enemy in Nazi-occupied France or laying out the lyrics to “Edelweiss” so that Richard Rodgers can devise a tune to match, you’re a collaborator. But no joining of forces is more difficult to fathom than the partnership between two writers. Writing, like dying, is one of those things that should be done alone or not at all. In each case, loved ones may hover around and tender their support, but, in the end, it’s up to you. So, when two writers decide to merge, what do they actually do?
Well, I’ve heard rumors of novelist couples who produce alternate chapters: one for you, one for me. A tidy scheme for twin souls but otherwise, assuredly, a prelude to divorce. Also, how can you guarantee that the cracks won’t show between your styles? John Fletcher, a popular and gifted playwright, once hooked up with some old slacker named Shakespeare to bring us “Henry VIII,” which was first performed in 1613, and linguistic analysis can propose, scene by scene, who delivered which slices of the cake. (Fletcher, who liked to get by with a little help from his friends, later conjured a play with three other writers. I bet that was peaceful.) Even so, nobody is sure about the sequence of events—whether Fletcher rounded off what Shakespeare couldn’t be bothered to complete, or whether the play was genuinely conceived in perfect harmony, with one guy sitting on the other’s lap, their fingers interlaced around the quill.
This is true. I rarely like collaborations. Something is always lost. They only work with plays or screenplays, and rarely there as well. Fanfic collaborations -- I've noticed are rather horrid, including the one I tried. Why? No one can agree on the plot. And if they do? It's paint-by-numbers, because it almost has to be for everyone to fall into line. They can be a lot of fun to write -- but painful to read. Writing is a solo profession not a group activity, unless you are a television writer.
*Yet the puzzle remains: why James Patterson? Why not Daniel Silva? It’s understandable that Clinton, with limited time on his hands, might well scout for a partner; you really need a Sundance Kid, if you want to be a Butch. Clinton could have taken his pick from the ranks of American novelists, though whether Don DeLillo would have leaped at the chance is open to debate. Personally, I’d have plumped for Martin Cruz Smith, who has demonstrated, since the first two sentences of “Gorky Park” (1981), that the English language lies at his command, whereas Patterson is helplessly at its mercy, as even the briefest browse of his corpus will confirm. Still, what a corpus: almost two hundred books to date, of which sixty-six have headed the Times best-seller list. In 2016, Forbes estimated his net worth at around seven hundred million dollars, a sum that would have made even Marcus Aurelius ditch the Stoicism and buy a yacht. If Clinton, like all aspiring novelists, yearned for his book to sell, he chose the right wingman. It could be called “The President Is Cashing In.”
But the gods are just, and although they denied the gift of literary grace to Patterson, they bestowed on him an even rarer skill. As a collaborator, he’s the top. Barely can he sketch an outline without reaching for a sidekick. So numerous are his assistants that one has to ask, less in snotty disapproval than in ontological awe, how many of Patterson’s books are actually “his,” and to what extent he is a writer at all, as opposed to a trademark or a brand. Were he to unearth a distant ancestor, in cinquecento Florence, whose output is mostly attributed to “the workshop of Giacomo Paterfilio,” no one would be surprised.
no subject
Date: 2018-06-18 10:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-06-18 12:12 pm (UTC)This reviewer more or less says the same thing, but not quite that directly.
no subject
Date: 2018-06-18 01:49 pm (UTC)As long as people want to buy throw away reading material, there will be a place for guys like James Patterson, Alan Dean Foster and Mickey Spillane. Isaac Asimov proved it is possible to turn out tons of stuff with at least a little more quality. But he was a pretty rare writer.
no subject
Date: 2018-06-18 07:08 pm (UTC)Eh, I've read all those writers you've mentioned, and the only one I'd say is throw away is Patterson. Mickey Spillaine created some interesting characters and a voice. And he was just as good with language as Isaac Asimov. Same with Alain Dean Foster, whose Splinter in the Mind's Eye was actually better than the source material.
Patterson? He doesn't write, he outlines.
no subject
Date: 2018-06-18 04:37 pm (UTC)I think the real question is what falls under that rubric. For example, given how Patterson works, is he really collaborating with his contracted writers? It seems to me that his work, like that of many showrunners, is more editorial. For example in many writing rooms there's a collaborative breaking of a story with a single writer (or sometimes team) creating the script. But this is not unlike what one sees in many films which often credit different people for the story vs the screenplay. In his case he apparently creates an outline alone and then reviews the results.
Yet if one considers the work of, say, an "adapted screenplay" from another work, that could be considered to be the same thing. One person is working from the bones of something else and is creating something that could be very faithful but is otherwise a remixed form of that work.
In music there is often a division of labor in things like lyrics versus melody. That seems more distinct than what a book team might do but I suspect it's similar. It could be round robin sort of thing but I'm guessing it's also people contributing their strengths (description vs dialogue, for example).
Ultimately though I think even when people aren't exclusively listed as collaborators, I've seen what a difference editors can make to a work, not only it's final read but its development. I suspect there's many a read that had uncredited collaborators which often only get revealed when those collaborators are absent or one gets to see the history of a work in research.
no subject
Date: 2018-06-18 07:16 pm (UTC)I can't really comment on Patterson's collaborations, because I read him before he started doing that...and he was horrible.
Collaborations are a mixed bag. I don't think they work for most novelists. Serial writers -- yes. Stand-a-lone novelists? Not so much. I've seen them work well and horribly in fanfic. Rarely well with fanfic -- because the collaboration is often done quickly and by email. (But I also am not much of a reader or writer of fanfic and rarely read it, and rarely write it. I prefer to write my own stuff. So there's that.) What I've seen of it in the genre field -- it's be abysmal. Television writing? Collaborative by nature. Comics -- they are collaborative by nature. Film? Mixed bag. The more writers -- the worse the film. Film's by committee don't work much better than novel's by committee. Why? Too short, and too self-contained. Song-writing - collaborative by nature for the most part, one writes the lyrics, one the arrangement. Same with many scripts and musicals. Different process. You meet, you discuss. But novel writing? I've rarely seen it work.