I’ve been away in New York for a few days at the Mystery Writers of America board meeting and am just now catching up on my favorite blogs. Ordinarily, I’d build whole posts around some of the stuff I’ve found…but I’m too lazy. So you will have to see for yourself what Emmy Award-winning writer Ken Levine has to say about Aaron Sorkin’s dig that he wasn’t a "real" comedy writer. And you’ll have to experience for yourself the utterly bizarre "Galactica-A Team-V" crossover fanfic that my brother Tod stumbled upon.
Speaking of favorite blogs Lee, I just got a good review by The Unsung Critic.
http://theunsungcritic.blogspot.com/2007/01/book-review-against-rapid-stream-by.html
Ah, a little bit of activity in this particular blog thread. It certainly has been quiet in here ever since I pointed out Mark Twain and Anne Frank wrote fan fiction.
When was a that? Got a source?
Mine is original fiction, though and in a contest here. I invite anyone to take a look and vote. There’s a publishing contract at stake.
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976900570
There’s a wide selection to read, but lack of a synopsis has readers going in blind.
This has its perils.
Brief registration here:
http://www.gather.com/register.jsp?beamBack=viewMessage.jsp?messageId%3D9851624185668385
There has been plenty of discussion about fanfic here, Betty. Check out the “What’s Stupid About It” thread.
Score one for you, Lee. But it seems no one has commented on my post mentioned above until Mark did so just now. Hi, Mark. Go to Internet Movie Database and look up Priscilla Lane. Then get yourself any collection of Anne Frank’s short stories and read “Dreams of Movie Stardom”. As for Mark Twain, his Sherlock Holmes pastiche “A Double-Barreled Detective Story” is available in its entirety on the net, just click on Search. I first read Anne’s fanfic story when I was fourteen, and Twain’s tale back in ’85 when I became a Holmesian. I read a great deal of Holmesian pastiche back then, you wouldn’t believe how much of it there was and a sizeable chunk was written in the 19th century and early 20th before the death of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In the 1930’s, only a few years after his death, the Doyle estate suppressed by threat of legal action a whole book of Holmesian pastiche and some parody. Fifty-odd years later I was lucky enough to find a copy from interlibrary loan; can’t remember the title though. That’s where I first read Twain’s god-awful pastiche. 🙂
Goodness, but it’s quiet in here. 🙂
Well, aren’t either of you gentlemen going to say anything? I’m waiting.
There are four responses you can make. (1) The stale old line ‘That’s different.’ (2) No response-which says in itself ‘I’m not willing to deal with this.’ (3) Attaching that long string of abusive terms to the names of Mark Twain and Anne Frank. (4) Or you can be big about it.
Betty, the blog doesn’t revolve around you or this post. The fanfic discussion has been alive and well elsewhere here. Have you checked out this post from a few days ago:
http://leegoldberg.typepad.com/a_writers_life/2007/02/misrepresented.html
You aren’t adding anything new to the debate. Your points have been covered to death on the many, many, many fanfic threads here.
Now that’s what I call answering without answering. 🙂
Since you really seem to want an answer, I’ll step in. You haven’t given many details, but I’ll do my best based on what you’ve said.
Writing about a real person isn’t fanfic, and is covered by a different set of laws. If Anne Frank didn’t write the story for publication but just for her own consumption, then that’s nobody’s business but her own anyway. It has little in common with someone writing using another person’s character and publishing it online.
From what you say, I assume that Mark Twain wrote and published his Holmes pastiche when Arthur Conan Doyle was alive. In which case, the issue is whether or not he can fairly be assumed to have had Doyle’s consent. I believe Doyle once telegrammed a producer adapting a Holmes play with the message: ‘Marry him, murder him, do what you like with him’, which might be taken as a sign that it was open season – but then again, that message may only have been an open season invitation to that particular producer.
Given that Doyle’s estate suppressed the book Twain’s pastiche was in, it seems reasonable to assume that Twain did not have permission. In which case, he shouldn’t have published the story. It’s possible Doyle’s heirs were doing something Doyle wouldn’t have approved of, but in the absence of any evidence to prove that, the only conclusion seems to be that Twain was in the wrong to publish the story, and the law recognised that in suppressing it.
Just because a writer of standing does something, it doesn’t mean it’s legal. It just means Mark Twain broke the law. I like Mark Twain’s stuff, but that doesn’t mean everything he did was perfect.
Both of these people were good writers, so it’s a fair refutation of the generalization ‘no one who uses someone else’s characters could ever possibly write anything good’ – though I don’t think Lee ever said that – but in terms of proving that fanfic is either ethical or legal, it doesn’t get you very far.
And if you chalk all that off to ‘the stale old line “that’s different”‘, then you’ll be being silly. Every example is slightly different, and case by case is the only way to look at them sensibly.
Thanks for your reply, Anonymous. In one of his posts (don’t recall where) Lee spoke of fanfic about real celebrities which is definitely part of the genre; though I don’t know how big a part. From what he said, he hates it as much as fanfic using fictional characters. He said the reason people write such stories is because they want to have sex with said celebs and whatnot; I simply didn’t think that was entirely fair for the reason stated above. As for Holmesian pastiche, a fair number of good writers jumped on the bandwagon when the character became popular. Twain simply wrote one of the first- and worst lol. A French writer, creator of ‘the gentleman burglar’ Arsene Lupin, decided to have his character match wits with Holmes. To avoid potential copyright problems he renamed the great detective Herlock Sholmes- yes, you read that correctly. I found two different translations of it. The correct term for fan fiction is pastiche, regardless of quality. When I first came online I had to teach myself to say “fan fiction” so that I would be understood. The thing is, pastiche is as old as storytelling itself; people have always taken from each other to tell stories. Copyright laws came very late indeed in the game. So, when I first surfed onto this site I was baffled-and still am-about Lee’s abusive rants against fan-written pastiche. All the namecalling-well, I hardly need to go into that, do I? (shakes head) I didn’t, and still don’t understand how an intelligent, educated professional writer- and a mystery writer at that!- could be so, well, ignorant of the long history of pastiche. I believe it’s a case of what is known as cultural amnesia.
Lee has addressed pastiche to death, too. If it’s in the public domain, he has no problem with it . His argument has been all along that fanfiction trapples on an author’s creative and legal rights…but if the work has fallen out of copyright protection or the author has given his permission, Lee has no problem with it.To my knowledge, Lee has never ranted against fan-written pastishe. He has ranted against fanfiction based on copyrighted works. He has also ranted against Real Person Slash which is sick, twisted shit and he’s absolutely right to call those writers perverts who shouldn’t be teaching our kids (one of the sicko RPS writers he found is a teacher!).
Lee has addressed pastiche to death, too. If it’s in the public domain, he has no problem with it . His argument has been all along that fanfiction trapples on an author’s creative and legal rights…but if the work has fallen out of copyright protection or the author has given his permission, Lee has no problem with it.To my knowledge, Lee has never ranted against fan-written pastishe. He has ranted against fanfiction based on copyrighted works. He has also ranted against Real Person Slash which is sick, twisted shit and he’s absolutely right to call those writers perverts who shouldn’t be teaching our kids (one of the sicko RPS writers he found is a teacher!).
I suppose there’s no truth to the rumour that Anonymous is Lee Goldberg? Not that it matters in the end.
If Lee wanted anonymity, he wouldn’t have started a blog with his name all over it and his picture on the top. Does he strike you as someone who is shy about expressing his opinion on anything?
I am amused that whenever someone agrees with his views (or comes to his defense), the fanficcers immediately assume that the person has got to be him (whether the person is posting anonymously or not). They just can’t concieve of the possibility that anyone would disagree with their pov (some even accuse Lee of being his brother Tod!). By the way, I think it’s a laughably big stretch to call fanfiction pastiche.
I think Betty is Lee.
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!
I must have missed this one when it first came around – thanks for the heads up Betty.
It’s ironic that Mark Twain published what is essentially fanfic, given that Samuel Clemens made a fairly eloquent argument before Congress for a perpetual copyright (while acknowledging that the US Constitution didn’t allow it). I think that leaves us with two possible conclusions:
A: Mr. Clemens was a hypocrite.
Or
B: He saw a fundamental difference between protecting the actual “copy” part of copyrights – meaning the ability to reproduce the original for profit – and the production of new, but derivative, work.
I think B is more likely. I also think you’ll find that that is not a popular opinion in this blog.
“It depends.”
Omg Mark said something! (faint) 🙂 You’re welcome erizo.
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