And even if there is no direct influence discernible in any given text, most narratologists agree that there are only a handful of stories ever told, if you go by “deep narrative structure”. My favorite example is by the late Prof. Dietrich Schwanitz, who compares “Hamlet” to Tennessee William’s play “Rose Tattoo”, which is basically Hamlet’s story seen in a mirror: all the essential elements are there, only turned around.

Thus, any criticism of our two authors being derivative is pretty much beside the point. John, you nailed it with “If the tradition or noting the differences of the derivative, double-coded work were sufficient explanation, then Tom Brown’s Schooldays, Stoker’s Dracula, and Wuthering Heights would still be in the Amazon.com Bestseller lists.”

I did enjoy the Laura Miller part about Count Dracula and the aristocrats though, since I haven’t really read much about Vampire-lore… not even Anne Rice (just seen the movies).

Thanks,
Maggie B.
everydayplaces.blogspot.com

Solomon’s words also came to my mind. I think actual originality is overrated; there’s a lot to be said for being a newly interesting part of an old, honored and beloved tradition.

I’ve realized in my own writings, just for fun, that it is very hard to write anything original. I get ideas, I mix and match, and I tip the hat a great deal to my favorite writers, but as I doubt my work will ever get published, it’s probably not nearly as big a deal.

To quote Solomon, there is nothing new under the sun. There are only so many stories and ways to tell them. I like the “new wineskins” concept, k2theforrest.

Library Lily, I’m no horror fan myself (I get queasy at the gory and grotesque). However, I read Dracula last year at John’s recommendation and it’s a great book. Creepy in parts with definite sense of dread, but a huge wad of it is detective fiction. And it’s an epistolary novel (love those). Compared to today’s fiction/film gore, eh.

IstariErangua and Lily Luna, you have an excellent point about the origins of similarities in fiction. I think you’re absolutely right.

Dr. Sturgis’ frustration over the failure to “understand or appreciate the depth of tradition” behind Meyer’s works is completely understandable. In the case of vampire fiction itself, unfortunately I am guilty as charged; much like Meyer, I am usually “waaay too chicken to read horror” (Jurassic Park, for instance, haunted my thoughts for months, leaving me decidedly uninterested in reading about other semi-sentient monsters.) Ah well. Maybe someday my inner Gryffindor will force its way through Stoker. Not before bed, though.

http://www.economicexpert.com/a/Nancy:Stouffer.html

I think it’s very hard to come up with something truly and completely original because so much has been written before and because it’s hard to forget completely what one has read. Rowling may well have read some of these other wizarding novels and not realized the extent to which she was borrowing from some of them, e.g. (perhaps) the idea of a hook-nosed potionsmaster from The Worst Witch. However, just because someone has already written a story about a young wizard battling evil doesn’t mean the next person can’t write such a story as long as it’s a different story. Of course, after Rowling’s category-busting hit, it will be very hard for anyone else to write something new and compelling about wizards.

I haven’t been commenting on Twilight because I haven’t read the series (or Anne Rice or Dracula for that matter). I’m not particularly fond of vampires. I can’t say if Meyer is somehow indebted to Anne Rice, but vampires seem pretty stock characters, so just about any vampire story is going to have some basic similarities to previous stories.

Consider another analogy – science fiction. I haven’t read much science fiction except for Heinlein, but there is a vast body of work out there. If I sat down right now and tried to write a science fiction story with only that background, avoiding copying Heinlein, I probably would end up with something with a lot of similarities to at least one and probably several works out there. And if I tried to read as much science fiction as possible before I started to avoid “copying” anyone else, I probably would give up the task of writing a new story in despair!

Althought I am certainly no fan of Twilight, owing to the fact that I couldn’t stand being in Bella’s head for so long, I think that you have hit on so many good points in the value of the book.

“She has many virtues, but originality isn’t one of them”

I think that this is a fair statement for both of these writers. Neither have created something that is particularly original. We can see the literary works of several centuries woven throughout the pages of both of these series, but I don’t think that this is necessarily a short coming or a bad thing. Anyone in sales, marketing, or advertising will tell you that packaging matters. Any of the faculty at Biola University’s school of Interculture Studies will tell you that contextualization matters. (I am sure that there are many others out there who will use this term as well, but I learned about contextualization here, so alas it is my only point of reference for the moment).

In blatant Christian-ese, what these authors seem to be doing is creating new wineskins. It is true, we have heard the same themes and messages from many other books and authors, but the genius of Rowling (and I suppose I must concede Meyers as well) is the ability to create engaging packing, to contextualize their message in a way that bridges the gaps and engages the heart, to make new wineskins in effect.

As I didn’t read any of the Harry Potter books until this last November (I think that is right… John, when did you speak at Biola?), I did not follow interviews and public statements made by Rowling, but I have read a few now and one thing that has consistently bothered me is the severe inconsistency between the depth of her writing and the shallowness of her speeches and interviews. I could understand a reluctance to discuss the deeper symbolism and meaning in her work, it is a long literary tradition (I seem to remember Hemmingway saying that The Old Man and the Sea had no deeper meaning, ah, I found the quote “There isn’t any symbolism. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The sharks are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is sh**. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know.”). What bothers me is not that reluctance but her consistent habit of pretending that the symbolism is different than it is or much more shallow than it is. Why bother pointing people in completely the wrong direction?

I look forward to your next post on the four levels of meaning.