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| Robert Louis Stevenson |
My mother actually pointed out an interesting literary perspective the other day. Recently, she took a trip to Easter Island (cool, right!?) and on to Samoa where she visited a Robert Louis Stevenson museum. She was surprised to learn that this man authored two famous stories -
Treasure Island and
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Stevenson had spent many years in the Pacific, and he remains a popular guy in Samoa. My mom was just struck by the fact that she even though she was very familiar with these two stories, she had no idea who their author was. I pointed out that many people are familiar with stories, but have no idea who authored them -
Dracula (Bram Stoker) and
Frankenstein (Mary Shelley) being prime examples of this. It got me thinking, though, why we would know some authors of famous stories and not others. What is the cultural factors behind knowing an author or not? Are there any examples of knowing an author, but not his/her stories?
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| Bram Stoker, author of Dracula |
I am especially interested in these questions because recently I have been contemplating the nature of author-celebrity status. The latest MLA focuses on fame and authorship - two concepts that I am finding are more and more relevant to my work. Take Rushdie, for example. He might qualify as an example where many people know his name, but few have ever read his books (and fewer would be able to recall the titles if prompted). This is in large part because of his "fame" with the death threat for Satanic Verses, but also because he does take time to cultivate a public persona.
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Mary Shelley,
author of Frankenstein |
So going back to the authors of
Dracula or
Treasure Island - why are they little known while their stories continue to be famous? Did they not cultivate a striking author persona during life? (Part of my current research is to think about how authors have done just this - cultivated a public persona. It is popular to think first of Mark Twain with his three-piece suits, or even Hemingway with his uber-masculine persona. Some authors that we study in this theme show purposeful cultivation - to sell books, to provoke interest, etc. Some were just unique personalities that drew extraordinary attention).
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| Mark Twain in his three piece suit |
Is it because they have a small body of popular work in comparison to, say, Charles Dickens? Or is it because these particular stories (
Dracula,
Frankenstein,
Treasure Island,
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) have been adapted so many times in film and other media that they have eclipsed their authors? It is perhaps not enough to say that there have been many film adaptations of these works (Dickens' work, after all, has also been adapted to many films), but these particular texts have also taken on cultural lives of their own - deviating not only from the author's particular vision, but from the text itself. I am not prepared to offer any hard and fast answers to these questions, but rather I wanted to throw them out to my readers to see if you have any theories. What stories do you know well, but are unsure about the author? Or celebrity authors whose works you have never heard of? Why do some stories stick with us and, on the other hand, just some authors?
I was recently surprised to learn of a few well-known stories being by Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm. I also used to be unaware of the author of The Jungle Book (I learned it was Rudyard Kipling in 9th grade, thanks to a student who was doing a presentation on him.) I think that if a book becomes a movie, we tend to look over the author of the story. Take Memoirs of a Geisha as a modern example. I don't know the author, but I know the story well because it's a film. Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll are also both films. This is one reason I kind of cringe when a book I love becomes a film, because I know the film will likely trump the book in terms of popularity with the general public. Maybe if films gave more credit to the authors, perhaps showed their picture at the beginning of a film or...I don't know...something to make their image stick with us?
ReplyDeleteVery interesting thought, Aunt Nancy! Oh, and I recently discovered that Shantaram is going to become a film (allegedly starring Johnny Depp). Oh no!
Developing a public persona is not a new concept but it is interesting to reflect on what sort of public identity Stoker, Shelley, or Stevenson may have cultivated in the second half of the 20th century, with the influence of television and glossy magazines and the rise of celebrity/populist author and tools like the Internet and Twitter, which have allowed authors to grow their audience in very new ways than ever before. <--Very long sentence alert!
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