[Sca-cooks] OT: How to destroy a book

[Elaine Koogler]

And then what's really fun are the books that rewrite history
altogether...Harry Turtledove, for instance, does this quite well...I
recently read his *Rule Britannia*, where the Spanish Armada wasn't
defeated, Spain now occupies England, Elizabeth is in the Tower...and
Shakespeare finds himself writing two plays, one to celebrate the Spanish
occupation, the other to instigate a rebellion that would free Elizabeth and
put her back on the throne.  Or the books by David Weber and friends,
wherein a cosmic event takes a chunk of 1990's West Virginia and plops it
down in 17th c. Germany, in the middle of the Thirty Years War.

Lastly, I'm currently reading the 7th in a series that has dragons as the
"air force" during the Napoleonic wars.  This series is so superb that Peter
Jackson has bought the rights to make a motion picture from them.

All of these involve actual historical figures...and obviously they are
being altered to fit the story line.  But here, it's pretty obvious that
this is happening!

Kiri

On Sat, Aug 21, 2010 at 4:46 PM, emilio szabo <emilio_szabo at yahoo.it> wrote:

>
> Adapting and even "manipulating" historical subjects to one's own literary
> purposes has a long history. Genre names like "historical novel" indicate
> that
> there are licences and no footnotes ...
>
>
> Do you assume, that there is something like historical "truth". May I
> suggest
> that you read some of Hayden White's or Arthur C. Danto's works on the role
> of
> narrativity in historiography?
>
>
> What you can destroy are certain copies of books. I guess you will have to
> buy
> each copy in order to destroy it. Your proposal will not be a cheap
> endeavour.
> If you are very rich and if you can buy many many copies in order to
> destroy
> them, this will have the consequence that the book ends up on top of the
> bestseller lists because so many copies have been sold. There is no
> distinction
> between the copies sold for reading and the copies sold for burning. The
> more
> copies you destroy, the more copies will be printed and sold ...
>
>
> Of course, things are different when you are a dictator destroying/burning
> only
> one copy in a symbolic way in a prominent situation and the media are
> present.
> But I sincerely hope you are not in such a position.
>
>
> If you do not like the book, write a review at Amazon or wherever you like
> instead.
>
>
>
> E.
>
>
>
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