A PGS Blog Reader Responds
A PGS blog reader responded via email to all my posts about e-books, e-readers, and text going digital. Here's his email:
He does bring up an interesting point about works having different texts based on a reader's personal preferences. How would you feel if you could choose the endings/resolutions of your favorite stories, as written/edited by the authors themselves; a sort of "choose your own type of story" option.
Let's use some examples: If you like happy endings, then you might prefer The Lord of the Rings to end not as J.R.R. Tolkien wrote it with Frodo and Sam leaving for Valinor and becoming separated from Pippin and Merry, right? That's an awfully sad ending, and really, the whole trilogy is about the ending of an age of that world. So maybe you'd like the other two hobbits to go along?
Or maybe you're the type who prefers sad endings, the tragedy of tales. So Hannibal Lecter is not the only one who gets away in The Silence Of The Lambs, but so does the other killer, Buffalo Bill, and we're left hanging with the ending of Clarice Starling having to hunt them both down and getting a dressing down from her boss for failing to close the case.
What if Prince Charming in all those fairy tales never gets the girl?
Well, folks, what do you think? Is this digital revolution risky for the way authors want to tell their tales?
I've read some of your blogs and the articles you cite about e-books, and I sometimes wonder (and worry) that this trend might follow what's now happening in gaming, where the printed material is constantly re-evaluated and updated online based on reader responses. Historically, reader response (actual or imagined) has altered literary texts, like the ending of Dicken's Great Expectations. The emergence of e-books might make such alterations easier to effect. E-books might be an attractive way to market books to an online generation, but this is also a generation that demands changes to texts based on individual taste and need. I believe the Internet empowers readers rather than authors, and that might mean people buying e-books of a particular author might actually have different texts, based on their own personal preferences.
Sorry for the mini-lecture, but I guess I'm just pointing out that I appreciate that you're bringing up this topic. This is something that authors should think about.
He does bring up an interesting point about works having different texts based on a reader's personal preferences. How would you feel if you could choose the endings/resolutions of your favorite stories, as written/edited by the authors themselves; a sort of "choose your own type of story" option.
Let's use some examples: If you like happy endings, then you might prefer The Lord of the Rings to end not as J.R.R. Tolkien wrote it with Frodo and Sam leaving for Valinor and becoming separated from Pippin and Merry, right? That's an awfully sad ending, and really, the whole trilogy is about the ending of an age of that world. So maybe you'd like the other two hobbits to go along?
Or maybe you're the type who prefers sad endings, the tragedy of tales. So Hannibal Lecter is not the only one who gets away in The Silence Of The Lambs, but so does the other killer, Buffalo Bill, and we're left hanging with the ending of Clarice Starling having to hunt them both down and getting a dressing down from her boss for failing to close the case.
What if Prince Charming in all those fairy tales never gets the girl?
Well, folks, what do you think? Is this digital revolution risky for the way authors want to tell their tales?
posted by pgenrestories at 8:40 PM
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