--- On Wed, 16/6/10, Suresh Ramasubramanian <[email protected]> wrote:
> From: Suresh Ramasubramanian <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: [silk] Ten toughest books to read
> To: [email protected]
> Date: Wednesday, 16 June, 2010, 7:57
> Indrajit Gupta [16/06/10 07:50
> +0530]:
> >It's addictive. Also, unlike Tolkien, he keeps picking
> up an obscure part
> >of the narrative and polishing it for a book at a time.
> The result is that
> >they won't finish until 2012!
>
> ... if at all.
>
> Jordan is in full soap opera (or maybe what local tv calls
> 'mega serial')
> mode here. His books won't stop unless the sales drop -
> when they'll be
> yanked out of circulation with incomplete or hurriedly
> wrapped up story
> arcs, the way one of those soaps gets yanked when its TRPs
> falls.
No, no, it's clumsy planning. You haven't been following them on their
web-site. He left a massive lump behind on his death. His collaborator and his
widow have been struggling to push that out (what the contents are, is known;
how events turn out, is not). Rowling had the same problem towards the end; too
many explanations, too many open files opened greedily in early books, too many
characters).
Andrew Lloyd Webber was walking around Lincoln Center with a famous composer,
and asked his friend whether it would be possible to explain minimalism. 'No,
Andrew, it will not be possible to explain minimalism to you as we walk around
the block. You, Andrew, are a maximalist." One needs to hear 'Gandhi' and
'Phantom of the Opera' reasonably close together, within, say, twelve years, to
'get' it.
