I like Austen fine, although I wouldn’t say I am a huge fan. Once readers have the lay of the land, they can jump into the mystery which for me was only so-so.
Readers needn’t be a fan of Austen – or even know who she is – to read Death Comes to Pemberley because in the opening chapter James fills us in on the backstory. No matter the source material, all literature, ultimately, has to stand on its own two feet. All novels are sequels influence is bliss.
Through parody and pastiche, allusion and homage, retelling and reimagining the stories that were told before us and that we have come of age loving – amateurs – we proceed, seeking out the blank places in the map that our favorite writers, in their greatness and negligence, have left for us, hoping to pass on to our own readers – should we be lucky enough to find any – some of the pleasure that we ourselves have taken in the stuff we love to get in on the game. That is why Harold Bloom’s notion of the anxiety of influence has always rung so hollow to me. …all literature, highbrow or low, from the Aeineid onward, is fan fiction. In his book of essays Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands he says: Even Pulitzer Prize winning author, Michael Chabon understands the merits of derivative fiction. (Fan fiction writers write parodies all the time.)īut, hey, I’m a huge fan of fan fiction and so pointing it out isn’t meant as a criticism. Perhaps I am misinterpreting the definition of fan fiction, but to me when you borrow another writer’s characters and just give them a new plot – that’s fan fiction. Works of fan fiction are rarely commissioned or authorized by the original work’s owner, creator, or publisher also, they are almost never professionally published.” I would have agreed with that definition except for all the fan fiction that has found its way into bookstores recently ( Fifty Shades of Grey, for example, literally started its life as Twilight fanfiction Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Android Karenina are two examples from Quirk Classics).
Because James is a crime writer, she wrote a mystery (although a relatively tame one, even by my standards.)įan fiction is (according to Wikipedia) “is a broadly-defined term for fan labor regarding stories about characters or settings written by fans of the original work, rather than by the original creator. That’s essentially what fan fiction is writers (albeit, generally amateur writers) find new ways to breathe life into familiar characters. James borrowed characters and settings made famous by Jane Austen and wrote them into a new story which takes place six years after Elizabeth and Darcy marry. Death Comes to Pemberley by famous British crime novelist P.D.
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