BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Pratchett, Rankin, Holte, Adams, Fforde (?) - product authors? And the Capsule library?

  
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
23:36 / 02.09.02
(Please to bear in mind that this is a humble seeking after truth; my understanding of some of these authors is limited to discussion on Barbelith and elsewhere; I cannot have read more than twenty or so books between them. This thread is intended to produce discussion, not lay down laws)

Product authors, by which I suppose I mean authors whose interchange relationship with their readership (see "the Cult author as exchange mechanism" thread in the Head Shop) is oriented around a specific set of exchanges with a specific (and often overlapping audience). Answer cloudy, try again later, to an extent, and perhaps the net is being cast too wide.

But.

What unites the "product/cult product" author as I (imperfectly) understand? In the good old days, one could simply say "Josh Kirby covers" and have done with it. A Josh Kirby cover, or an approximation of a Josh Kirby cover, could be taken to signify "Hey, if you can't wait for another Terry Pratchett novel, this will do reasonably well - it has lots of anachronism, a wacky dragon, a camp Devil - you know the drill".

Things seem to be a little more complex these days, but a few suggestions:

a) Prolificity - the days when one could write The Worm Orouboros and then fuck off for a bit are long gone. If you aren't producing a novel a year, you are yesterday.

b) A degree of personality marketing - Pratchett and his hat, Fforde's wacky Porsche, Rankin's pub-culture geezerdom.

c) Funny names. Often hilarious puns, and again oftne anachronistic.

d) Behaviour - characters stepping out of character, speaking with one internal voice, breaking the fourth wall in a fairly undemanding "ladies and gentlemen, we are completely surroudned by film" way.

e) Transpositions of concepts to (you guessed it) humorous effect. Pratchett's entire schtick, as far as I can tell, revolves around this. Opera in a mock-heroic fantasy world. Theatre in a mock-heroic fantasy world. Movies in a mock-heroic fantasy world. Popcorn in a mock-heroic fantasy world. However, it is also worth noting that an early Pratchett short sotry "The Hades Situation" or some such, has resonances with some of Rankin's apocalyptic conceits; see also cross-currents between "Good Omens", "The Dark Side of the Sun", "Strata" (itself a parody of "Ringworld", near as I can tell) and other writers - it is possible that Pratchett is distinguished more by an extensively realised world than a sui generis style. And what is a hard-baked time-travelling gumshoe but a fish-out-of-water conceit?

f) Screwball comedy. For some reason this has rallied magnificently, to the extent that the Three Stooges and W C Fields appear to have set their flags in bedrock and cast a shadow over our century. Jokes must be delivered at tremendous pace. Every name, as mentioned above, is a funny name. If a joke is worth making, it is worth making over and over and over again (the fact that the roofs of theatres, where the stage rigging is, are known as "flies" is anus-bleedingly funny, Throw in the fact that people are dropping like flies and you pretty much have a recipe for prolapse).

g) Every so often, the author demonstrates that he can do this serious stuff if he wanted to, but generally chooses not to. Thus, Granny Weatherwax is a bit dark and scary, or Lazlo Woodbine's friend gets eaten by demons to general consternation, or, perhaps best of all, there is an oven-gloved stab at a sex scene.

h) Placement. This is a stretch, and may only apply to a very small number of writers (Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett spring immediately to mind), but I am thinking particularly here of a note at the bottom of the last page of a Pratchett book - not the next page over, mind, or even the other side of the page - saying "And a range of characters from the Discworld, from Death to Greebo, are immortalised in fimo and available from..." or words to that effect. Essentially, perhaps, the view (see again "author as cultural exchange mechanism", probably) that the persona of the author and the books the author produces are both elements of a broader commercial project, and designed to generate synergies within them.

I guess I'm informed on a number of sides by this. i) I found Pratchett's Maskerade in a charity shop, and having read it went into deep shock. ii) There's this princess with a magic sword and iiI) I'm increasingly fascinated by the idea, possibly Amazon-driven, of the Capsule Library - the idea that a single book from a personal library could act as a holographic representation of the entirety, much as, on average, somebiody procuring a random book from my library woudl either assume I had a lot of knackered old classical texts or that I was a 14-year old girl. But what if their hand happened to fall on the copy of "Better than Life" that I may or may not still have? Or indeed Maskerade? Is the "product author", if such a thing there be, a move towards the creation of an absolute truth in "if you like x, you'll love y".

Note also that my greater familiarity with sci-fi and fantasy has yanked me that way, but what about other genres? Horror? I recall American Gods was sold with a bellyband saying "If you don't enjoy this as much as the latest Stephen King, your money back", which struck me as an incredibly depressing place to set the bar but has interesting ramifications, as the choice of author seems to suggest that the pleasure generated will not only be of comparable intensity but of a comparable type - "if you liked Stephen King, you'll love Neil Gaiman; or, at the very least, you will like him". Thrillers? Murder Mysteries? If a person has a Brother Cadfael, does that mean Sister Fucking Fidelma will turn up at some point? Does Dom Delillo demand Paul Auster?

One possible starting-point could be the famous back-cover blurb (paraphrased, since I have no copy of "The Colour of Magic") "If Terry Pratchett had put quill to paper before Douglas Adams published his Hitchhikers Guide, Ford Prefect would still be standing on an asteroid with his thumb out". What is this intended to convey, and what relevance does it have for our purposes?

Help me, my tutors and lovers. For if I crack this I need never stress about birthday presents again.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
07:52 / 03.09.02
Haus, I think it's possible I speak for many people when I say I have no idea what you're asking.

I thought you were going to have a rant about product writing, then I thought you were discovering that Pratchett is capable of producing ideas which are, to say the least, more sophisticated than his book covers would suggest.

Then there was some discussion of merchandising, (Douglas Adams? Did I miss something?) and then birthday presents.

I just haven't had my wheaties this morning.

On (one of the) subject(s):

Adams was original. He was bitter. He was a cult writer in a rather more meaningful sense - his writing stuck with you and changed your thinking.

Pratchett, at first, was witty, off-beat, and rather obvious, but is now over-familiar, witty, and curiously filled with fascinatingly weird ideas. He's definitely so successful that 'cult' is perhaps not the word. Religion, possibly. He defines an aspect of the mainstream.

Rankin borrows a lot from Robert Anton Wilson, or he used to. Maybe that's unfair. I loved his unrepentant sinners in the East Of Ealing stuff. But I got bored. I don't think he's a cult writer in the same sense as Adams.

I've never read Holt.

Jasper Fforde (and his publishers would be delighted to see him on this list) is someone who works so hard on his writing it makes me feel a bit small. He climbed a mountain of rejected work to reach The Eyre Affair, and he learned every step of the way. He'll probably just get better. He's only published two books so far; I think it's a little early to bracket him with the others when he may go rather further.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
10:31 / 03.09.02
Yeah, I would like to read Fforde - I put him in because some of the comments in the thread discussing him seemes to suggest a stylistic kinship.

On "Merchandising and Adams - have I missed something?" - I think you may have missed the set of spin-off books from the radio series, the TV series, the Hitch Hiker computer game, the Starship Titanic (with the big "written by Douglas Adams" legend), the stage musical...see also the stage productions of Pratchett, the clay figures, the maps of Ankh-Morpork, the Discworld computer games...both, although Adams in a very prototypical way, seem to be brands in a way more familiar with sci-fi or fantasy TV series rather than novelists. I think Pratchett or Pratchett's agent is an awful lot better at controlling production and directing revenue stream, though.

As for what I was asking...I'm not entirely sure myself. I was doing something else when I wrote this, and am slightly surprised at having written it at all. I think in general I was interested in homogeneity and difference in publishing genres, and thus whether a group of works can be considered....maybe "globular" is a workable term. The authors mentioned above I used because of my greater familiarity with the genre and their apparent popularity on Babrelith, but I think (as mentioned) the same question could be applied to horror, thrillers &c &c.

More a meditation than a question, really - I suggest people respond to whatever they feel invites response.

Oh, and P.S. - the Adams being original thing is one fo the things to be taken perhaps from the back cover blurb - it attempts to undermine Adams by comparison by suggesting that his primacy was a purely temporal one - he happened to have been writing first. This ignores a) any possible influence on Adams by Pratchett and, for that matter, b) that Pratchett was first published at the age of 16. Note also the use of the "quill"...
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
12:12 / 03.09.02
Back-cover blurb of what? You're not making any more sense than you were earlier. And Adams did something which had not been done before. That's a great deal more than 'temporal' primacy and we're not getting into a discussion of authorship and the notion that that kind of writing was an idea whose time had mysteriously and independently come. At least, you can get into it if you want.

I'm not sure that all of those things count as merchandising. The TV show doesn't, the books of the radio stuff don't because the radio stuff was different in rather significant ways. The computer game probably does, but the Starship Titanic does not - that was an independent project, not a piece of kitsch. Pratchett is maerchandised up the wazoo, but until you show me a stuffed Zaphod doll from 1989, I'm not convinced about Adams...
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
12:58 / 03.09.02
Back cover blurb of The Colour of Magic, first British paperback printing, if I recall correctly. And, you see, that's kind of what I mean. It's an interesting statement precisely for its series of interlocking untruths and implciations. And not one made by me. See the earlier:

One possible starting-point could be the famous back-cover blurb (paraphrased, since I have no copy of "The Colour of Magic") for a small but vital clue as to what I may have been refering to.

As for Adams and merchandise, I'm disinclined to mention the stage show, since you did not, or indeed the single released under the auspices of Marvin the Paranoid Android. One notable thing is that these things tended to go on with or without his blessing, but almost entirely independently of him (barring the computer game, which he got quite into, IIRC). The Pratch appears better at integrating the enthusiasms of small suppliers into a cohesive (and remunerative) marketing whole - the difference between fandom and satrapy, perhaps. Which is why "merchandising" is probably not the right word for the Adams project. Whereas I a increasingly convinced that Pratchett's books are not in fact books but integrated media offerings supporting a brand proposition.
 
 
Sax
15:36 / 03.09.02
Speaking extremely simplistically on one of the themes Haus raised, there's an obvious and non-too subtle attempt to edge readers of certain books into trying others which share stylistic themes if not actual plot/character similiarities - which is only natural, really, from the point of view of giving readers "what they want" and positioning authors in the right market where they are going to sell the most books.

What bothers me, slightly, is the fact that some people *do* want to read books that are so similar. As I mentioned in the Fforde thread, I read The Eyre Affair and quite enjoyed it, and because I was on me holidays and didn't want to dive into the copy of Jamaica Inn I'd just bought because I was on the beach and feeling all fluffy, I immediately started reading the Fforde follow-up, Lost In A Good Book. By the fiftieth page it was grating immensely, probably because I'd had a complete bellyfull of the characters.

But Haus is correct when he describes authors such as Rankin, Ford, Pratchett etc having similar appeal, and there are doubtless people who jump from one to the other constantly, reading nothing else outside this quite narrow field. That would drive me completely insane. It would be like going to work. As much as I enjoyed the first Fforde (disregarding the annoying bits like stupid punny names etc) I could no more stomach reading Terry Pratchett or anything similar now than I could shave a rugby player.

Hmm. Sorry, I'm waiting for Ellen MacArthur to call and I'm not sure where this is going. Perhaps we could re-package this thread as a wacky fantasy novel "in the tradition of Terry Pratchett" and call it something like "Losing The Plot".
 
 
Ethan Hawke
15:55 / 03.09.02
Coming at this from a slightly different perspective -


The Haus:

Does Dom Delillo demand Paul Auster? [in the same way Doug Adams demands Terry Pratchet et al., according to your observations]

Well, yes. Surely I'm not the only one to have a bookshelf full of Vintage Contemporaries acquired rapidly and pretty much indiscriminately after a first encounter with Thomas Pynchon. A boy of a certain age is libel to develop a sluttish proclivity to sampling the wares of any Ivy League-educated white male who toils in the barren fields of the genre known as "Meta-Fiction," and it's really not so different than having a shelf full of Xanth books.

It's interesting that you picked Delillo and Austers as your reps for "literary" (as opposed to genre) fiction, as I tend to regard Douglas Adams and Piers Anthony as a gateway drug to "metafiction." Adams and Anthony (and Fforde as well, though slightly differently. I haven't read any of your other sample authors) mine a vein of deep self-referentiality and narrative reflexivity that, with repeated exposure ( as you can't just have one Xanth book. Why is that, is I think, part of your question. Another aspect of this multiplication of pulp paperbacks is that series by these authors are often sold in box sets of 3 or more volumes. Why just buy one book when you can get 3 at once, to be read in as many days?) becomes an intrinsic part of "books," and when it shows up in the ostensibly serious and weighty "Vineland" you get out of the library as a lark at age 14, you're immediately at home. Plus, "Vineland" has ninjettes in it. Rad.
 
 
All Acting Regiment
19:10 / 22.06.06
So how do we feel about this in 2006? This relatively small thread has always interested me.
 
 
Hallo, Paper Spaceboy
20:43 / 22.06.06
I'm still trying to suss out what the question is, actually. I liked Pratchett more once upon a time but his recent stuff is stale and recycled; but then I think I prefer his non-Discworld stuff anyway, with the Bromeliad being the best and the Johnny books being a close second.

And the Pratchett Discworld Canon has its ups and downs. Some books are good, some are bad, a lot of the recent-non-Tiffany ones struggle with being a bit mish mash. And I got bored with Adams's Hitchhiker books after the first two, I'd say, although I slogged through all five one ill-conceived week after seeing the film and while there were good bits I was a bit disappointed in the end.

But I can't get into Myth-Takes or whatever, and Xanth bored me straight off the once or twice I picked them up. There are similarities and obvious intent toward the same audience, clearly, but that doesn't automatically equal a good sell; differences in writing style would be the big one. Sometimes the narrative voice just doesn't click. But that's not limited to genre fiction (ignoring that all fiction is genre in some way), as stated above; similar intent between authors does not mean that they automatically hit all the right buttons with readers equally.

I'd put Paul Auster in meta-fiction, yeah, but also into detective fiction. But I get edgy about clearly delineating anything into one specific genre.

But I don't think I've answered even one question, I don't know.
 
 
Not in the Face
12:28 / 13.07.06
I think the authors mentioned do have ties together in terms of their media presentation - I haven't read Rankin because he is so often compared to and alongside Pratchett. And that comparison never seems to be for better or worse, but more in exactly the kind of 'if you like this, you'll like that' way that the thread summary refers to.

Again not really sure if there are any questions to be answered here, but I feel that Adams and Pratchett are responsible but in different ways. Adams' books generated a public perception, to my eyes, of being something different - of being both light-hearted and yet serious about human truths. How far this is correct I can't say, I found the first one enjoyable, the rest less so and certainly didn't gain the great insights that others implied I should. In any case I think this attitude of serious comedy has come about without any deliberate effort by Adams, it just sort of coalesced around his books.

Pratchett on the other hand has gone to great lengths to create exactly the kind of self-referential mythology that I think the thread is looking at. I have read interviews with him where he compares his works to 'serious' works of literature and argues that his are ignored because of their fantasy setting. The most significant point though is surely his proclivity - 30 DiscWorld novels alone. I think he hasn't so much defined the field but dug it up and built an entire genre out of it. Moreover his works seem to have latched onto the feelings that surround Adam's work - whether deliberate or not.

I can't say whether Rankin and others are similar as haven't read them, although the points made by Haus in the first post are accurate for both Adams and Pratchett.

I suppose my point, so far as I have one, is that it isn't so much a monolithic groups of authors, so much as it is Pratchett that is the monolith and its his work that has brought these different authors 'together'.

Edit - Having looked at Pratchett's bibliography I think its interesting to note that the Colour of Magic is 1983, by which point three of Adams' Hitchiker books had been written. Through the 80's, Pratchet writes 8 out of the 30. Since then its been 1 or 2 a year (and even in the 80's, 6 were written between 87 and 89). Does this reflect the demands of an audience that read Adams at a certain age and seek more in that style. Pratchett also wrote Dark Side of the Sun in 1976 and Strata in 1981, both very similar in terms of style and humour to, well everything else he wrote, but it wasn't until the late 80's, early 90's that his production of this genre really took off. Not sure how far this advances the point, if at all, but it refers back to my suspicion that Pratchett is mining an, apparently inexhaustible, vein of demand for boosk in the style of Adams. Rankin's publishing history seems very similar, if slighlty less prolific.
 
  
Add Your Reply