I was recently revisiting Stephen Donaldson's "
Gradual Interview" on his website (searching for a particular quote, I didn't find the one I was looking for, but posted another on the relevant thread here). I came across the following, in the Mar-2004 section, that I thought was interesting.
Donaldson is asked: "has it been difficult to jump back into this series after so long and keep the same "feel" as you had two decades ago?" He answers:
Quote:
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Strangely, recapturing the narrative tone and rhetoric of the earlier books has been relatively easy. I guess it comes naturally. The hard part has been convincing my editor to leave the "feel" of the prose alone. She's a modern woman, much younger than I am, who hasn't read any previous "Covenant" books, and who lacks my background in the study of Conrad, James, and Faulkner. Instinctively she prefers the kind of lean and ambiguous prose which never calls a spade a spade (never mind a ^#$%# shovel), and which certainly never identifies any of the emotions of the characters. Nor does she like the pacing of Covenant-style prose: to use a musical analogy, she would rather jump from key to key without modulations, which, she feels, "bog down the narrative." So my biggest technical challenge in revising "Runes" has been to preserve the stylistic essence of the previous books without outraging her sensibilities.
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And there is a second short response to a similar question:
Quote:
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As I suggested in answer to an earlier question, I'm trying to strike a balance between what I prefer to call the "operatic" prose of the earlier "Covenant" books and the less poetic sensibilities of modern readers.
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Since the books in question (
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant) are among my favourites, I find it rather disconcerting to read that a modern editor finds the prose unacceptable. I also find it odd that Donaldson would be assigned an editor that hasn't read the first books in the series. But most of all, I find it strange to have pointed out how much things have changed in (what seems to me to be) such a short time.
In some respects it is good to see that a famous author is being conscientiously edited, and is taking notice of the editor (it often seems, to me, that famous authors get away with more than they should - to their own detriment). On the other hand, for a project like this it would appear important that the style remains at least identifiably similar to the starting point.
Yes, okay, so the above quote is close to 10 years old now, but it seems still relevant because this is an author that was undertaking a project that he knew then was going to take 9 years or more of his time - the last of the four books is getting close to publication now. That, in itself, makes the whole topic all the more interesting.