Kevin's Watch

Check out georgerrmartin.com for the latest explanation on the delays with the publishing of A Feast for Crows.

Interesting reading, to say the least.

Or click this
AFFC News at the Hangar warning some ASOIAF spoilers! (George R. R. Martin)

"In the end, the only thing anyone remembers about a book is how good it was."

Well said, Mr. Martin. Some people can't understand that mind-numbingly simple fact, and they'd rather have the man's work impeded; they'd rather have the book released now. Pretty damn selfish. Pretty damn sad. I'm outraged that people are mad at him for other things he does in his life, like going to conventions, etc. First off, it's none of their business, and, second off, like he said, he has a life beyond writing books for the masses. I doubt any of his detractors are professional writers. Professional whiners, maybe.

They wouldn't even have their little tantrums if it weren't for his books in the first place, which HE wrote. They should be grateful and learn something called patience.

And I don't see how the book is being delayed. It would be delayed if it is FINISHED and they're just waiting to release it, but no, Martin is still writing it. He's making it, not delaying it. Making it.

Sorry, no sympathy from me. If you don't want to be hassled and you don't want to write before you publish, stick to a schedule. People pay money for these books, typically around $20 a pop. That's an investment for which you are waiting to be paid off, the reward being a complete story. If you take somebody's money, you deliver a product on time. That's all there is to it.

Maybe it's just me, but I think the quality of the book is more important than it coming on time. If you want a crappy book, then fine, release it before it's finished. Go ahead.

Sorry Syl, ya know I love ya-gotto go w/Foul on this one...

There's merit on both sides here. Certainly GRRM should be taking the necessary time to produce his best work. I don't think, however, that that means taking the time to produce his longest work. If there's one weakness I've noted in his current series, it's a kind of self-indulgence: he insists upon having 437,000 different viewpoint characters* and giving each one a full share of 'face time' in the story. That dissipates the focus of the tale, reduces its energy, and ultimately makes the books bloat up beyond manageable size. (The Gap had a touch of the same problem, especially in Chaos and Order. We really didn't need to see 15 different people work out their personal conspiracy theories on Angus's message to UMCPHQ.)

George Orwell, whom I would nominate as the most perceptive literary critic of the 20th century, had something to say about this kind of self-indulgence. He said it, as you might guess, in an essay on Charles Dickens:

George Orwell wrote:And this partly accounts for the needless ramifications of Dickens's novels, the awful Victorian 'plot'. It is true that not all his novels are alike in this. A Tale of Two Cities is a very good and fairly simple story, and so in its different way is Hard Times; but these are just the two which are always rejected as 'not like Dickens' — and incidentally they were not published in monthly 'numbers'.

Hard Times was published as a serial in Household Words and Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities in All the Year Round. Forster says that the shortness of the weekly instalments made it 'much more difficult to get sufficient interest into each'. Dickens himself complained of the lack of 'elbow-room'. In other words, he had to stick more closely to the story.

It seems as though there is something in an open-ended serial format, whether published in weekly magazines or in biennial fat books, that tempts even the greatest novelist to flab and padding. (I will concede that GRRM's padding is a lot more muscular than Dickens's tended to be; but it still doesn't lead one measurably towards the end of the story.) Exhibit A, nowadays, is of course Robert Jordan.

On the other side, however, there is just one simple point. GRRM is entitled to work as fast or as slowly as he feels necessary; and in fact he works very fast. Most writers don't average more than 100,000 words a year, and each volume of ASOIAF is upwards of 300,000; the longest may approach half a million. The books wouldn't be there without him, and it is simply no use getting impatient. That doesn't mean his fans aren't entitled to feel impatient, for 'sensation is sensation' and one can't, as a rule, simply choose to switch off strong feelings. But it is very rude for people to complain about the delay in publication, and downright boorish to demand that he give up his other interests in life.


*My estimate from memory. I think actually it's more.

The one thing Martin said which jumped out at me, when he was citing other notable examples of delayed literature, was this:

"Would anyone have wanted Lord of the Rings or Vance's Demon Princes knocked out any faster?"

Well, yeah . . . the poor schmucks who died waiting for it.

That's sort of my take on it - I'm fifty years old, I've been following this damned thing since 1996 when A Game of Thrones was first published, long before this work became a "phenomenon," and I want to read it all before I shuffle off this mortal coil. Or before Martin shuffles off this mortal coil. And he's older than me and he doesn't look as good, either.

No brag, just fact.

Well, my grandfather was in his prime as a powerlifter in his 50s, so I don't consider 50 "old" or a time for one to contemplate mortality. It can only feel old if one accepts that as a state of mind. Then again, I’m nineteen, so how can I know? That’s just my two cents. And I'm sure Martin won't take 10 or 20 years, heh. A little extreme. He seems to be near the final stages, as far as Feast is concerned.

If somebody dies waiting for their favorite author's latest installment, then that's terrible. Honestly. But that's that. Come on, what can the author do about that? He doesn't even know if that person is alive or not. He's just writing a book. There's nothing the author can do but write. What would you have him do? Speed up his writing? Rush his work, lessening his art? There's nothing worth that.

I agree that it's the quality of the book that counts, not the length of time it takes to write it. There's no excuse for demanding that an artist to do less than his best possible work. That would be like factory work: How many words can you write in a year; how many dollars can you ka-ching into the box? For the artist to take that attitude, it would be like self-amputation.

And absolutely, an artist has a right to a personal life. First of all, because he/she is human. Second, because one's personal life is the spring that nourishes the art. Not only he but we are the beneficiaries of his personal life.

While I agree with Farseer that Martin's books sprawl, and stumble with each change of viewpoint, every paragraph Martin includes contributes to the deepening of that reality.

Lastly, I may well not live until the last MAN WHO book is written, but I have every intention of coming back to read it when it is done. SRD, feel the breeze of wings around your forehead?

My point was not that authors have to finish on time all the time, but that they have to accept criticism when they don't. It's part of the job, and it's not just editors that have a right to be upset by an author missing a deadline.

It's wrong to put an author on a god-like pedestal and say they aren't bound by the same constraints a normal person is just as much as it's wrong to dictate what any celebrity should do in their off time.

-----

Homer Simpson wrote:I believe that famous people have a debt to
everyone. If celebrities didn't want people pawing through
their garbage and saying they're gay, they shouldn't have
tried to express themselves creatively.

In closing, you people must realize that the public owns you
for life! And when you're dead, you'll all be in
commercials, dancing with vacuum cleaners. Thank you, your
honor.

Ah, sorry Syl. I see now. I thought you meant something more extreme.

Yeah, I'm mad at them for not being understanding, but oh well. I accept that they're doing what they're doing and there's nothing I can do about it.

So did I, you cynical...

After further contemplation, I think another reason I have trouble with this delay is because Martin never had this problem with the earlier novels. The longest previous stretch of time was two and a half years between Game and Clash. I guess I just sort of assumed that if he kept to a steady writing schedule, that we could expect the books to come out in a reasonable amount of time.

And I'm sensitive to this issue because it's not the first time. I became a fan of David Gerrold's War Against the Chtorr series in 1979. Here we are, 25 years later, and he's what, halfway finished? Each time the new book finally appears, we get the big promotional push from the ecstatic publisher, all the prior novels are reprinted in nice, matching covers, Gerrold assures his adoring fans he's knuckling down and rolling along . . . and then another seven or eight years drag by.

I just hope Martin manages to avoid this, but this latest delay is really giving me bad vibes.

And then there's always the example of Stephen King - both bad and good. The bad, his fluke accident demonstrating how precarious life is, and the good, he got down and got funky and finished his magnum opus in record time.

And by the way, Lord Foul, I don't feel fifty at all, and I hope both George and myself keep on truckin' right to the century mark. But stats say we won't, and since I don't believe anyone else is capable of satisfactorily resolving his great series, I want him to finish it in my lifetime. And considering I was only 43 when I started it, I don't think that's an unreasonable expectation.

So lay off the fattening foods, Double R. Because I love your series, and I'll trumpet to the Heavens that it's the best epic fantasy ever written . . . but I'm a demanding fan, too. And yes, I want to see the conclusion.

Samples!!

A

Spoiler

Cersei

chapter for your enjoyment (spoiler for those who do not wish to know one of the new PoVs):

georgerrmartin.com/chapter.html

This chapter has been seen before, but it's only just been posted on the site in full. Thought people who had not read it would want the opportunity.

Thanks, Murrin. For some reason, until I accessed your link, I was having trouble finding that sample on Martin's website.

I've read the Arya and Daenerys chapters, and the Iron Isles prologue in Dragon Magazine, but not wanting to buy the Storm of Swords pb just for one chapter, I had not yet read this sample. Thanks.

Well, some possible bad news...I read at the Song of Ice and Fire board last night that it might be a year before we get our Feast...this from several people who went to Martin's reading at the recent Worldcon in Boston...

p080.ezboard.com/fasoiaffrm4.showMessag ... =541.topic

Please note -- if you click on that link, it will tell you what happens in a chapter from AFFC...do not click if you don't want spoilers!

Well, I'd like to say I'm shocked and appalled . . . but I'm not.

Because Martin is also revolutionizing the excruciatingly painful art of making fans wait forever for a series fix.

I'm thinking five years between each novel now. If we're lucky.

Apparently GRRM also admitted there are going to be 3 books after AFFC.

And there we have it. He finally comes out and tells us there will be A Time for Wolves - up til now he's just said it'll depend how the other books turn out. So - seven books total in the series. Even longer to wait.

Could you please send this to the new Martin forum in the Library dAN? Thanks.

Sum sui generis
Vs