TheFallen wrote:Condign wrote:TheFallen wrote:"I can't help thinking that SRD should have issued a fair few preliminary drafts to get committed reader feedback, before sending the final manuscript off for publication.
No. No, No No No No.
Although I agree with all the other points, I can countenance this.
(I guess you meant that you
couldn't countenance this.
Well... your review elsewhere matches pretty exactly with what I and others have also posted as our main issues with TLD. Okay, I freely acknowledge that it's SRD's book and SRD's world, so he can do as he damn well pleases.
Having said that, as an author of a long-running series, he must have been aware (and especially given the success of the first two Chronicles) that he had a wide readership heavily invested in the Covenant saga and as such, I wonder what he'd think about the fairly prevalent feeling of dissatisfaction at least expressed here on the Watch - which, let's face it, is where a wide group of his longest-term committed fans hang out.
To my mind, there are only two possible causes of such widespread reader disappointment. Either a) SRD for whatever reason rushed TLD, employing clunking
dei ex machinae and tying off narrative loose ends both hurriedly and carelessly. Or b) the manuscript got savagely abridged and hacked about by an overzealous editor. In either case, a "sounding-board" type objective view from one or two other interested parties pre-publication might have resulted in a less problematic culmination of a work spanning 35 years or so.
I wouldn't blame SRD if it was reason a) above... it must be so hard for any artist to see the wood for the trees when examining his/her own work. And if it was reason b) above, I'd love for there to be a "director's cut" release of the Last Chrons, even if only along the lines of "Gildenfire", with any chapters that didn't make the cut issued separately. Wishful thinking, I know.
Damn but I'd love to know which....
A propos of the above, I just found this answer by SRD to an interviewer's question...
Q: What role do beta readers play for you in the process?
SRD: I'm entirely dependent on my personal readers...Although I strictly avoid people who want to tell me how to write, I have an enormous appetite for what A. J. Budrys called "reader symptomatology" (I like this; I don't like that; I find this character revolting and/or hot; I took a nap in the middle; I don't understand what you mean here; I wish you would do something different there). I can only improve as a writer if I have readers who will tell me what my prose actually communicates (which has been known to diverge significantly from what I thought I was communicating).
Long, long ago-in a galaxy far, far away-editors performed this service for writers (and for readers!). Before he published my books, Lester del Rey sent me any number of 20+ page letters excoriating my efforts. (For which I'm more grateful now than I was at the time.) But modern editors are shamefully overworked, and they simply don't have time to provide the kind of detailed symptomatology I crave. Hence the importance of my personal readers. These days, my editors don't see my books until my readers and I have been over the text page by page-and sometimes line by line.
I believe that SRD's two "personal readers" are (or at least were) members of the Watch here. I'd really like to know if he asked them again to give him feedback on TLD (or The last Chrons as a whole) or whether he'd stopped bothering.
It strikes me that, when SRD gave the above answer - sorry, I don't know how long ago it was - he was well aware of the danger of the artist "not being able to see the wood for the trees", or in other words, not being able to take an objectively critical view on his own work and thus not being able to identify problems/issues by so doing. Given his point (that I'm sure is correct) that modern editors simply don't have the time to offer relevant constructive criticism, you'd have thought that his usage of "personal readers" would have been even more crucial in helping him avoid the fairly substantial number of very widely acknowledged (at least here on the Watch) narrative disappointments.
I mean, the man himself says he had "an enormous appetite for reader symptomatology". I wish he'd paid more attention to that appetite in TLD, then.
PS Zar... much as I'd have loved to warn you about (among many other things) the "Carebear Land with dancing Ewoks, gambolling My Little Ponies, fluffity bunnies, rainbows and lollipop trees," cutesey ending, I couldn't in good faith. Remember though that I did advise you to have a double shot of bourbon at hand - to ward off the shock and disappointment of the "You're kidding... after 35 years, that's really it???" culmination... it's all I could do.
Share the pain, dude... share the pain. Come and have a rant in some of the other threads... it's sort of cathartic (but not really).
).
