Last week Cory Doctorow posted a review of JULIA, by Sandra Newman, which coincidentally I've just finished reading.
Novel-Writing MachinesNewman's novel is an authorized retelling of Orwell's dystopian classic from the viewpoint of Julia, the protagonist Winston Smith's lover. As Doctorow mentions, Winston thinks of the Party as omniscient and omnipotent -- "Big Brother is watching you." Viewing this society through Julia's experience, we realize it's as corrupt and inefficient as the bureaucracy of any other dictatorship. She knows how to take advantage of cracks in the system, for instance with bribery and tricks such as getting a break from her job by signing out under the category "Sickness: Menstrual." (After all, nobody checks up on that excuse.) As a mechanic who maintains novel-writing machines in the Fiction department of the Ministry of Truth, she has the skills to fix other things as well, e.g., the perpetually clogging lavatories in her dormitory. She's valued for her abilities and enjoys her work. She also enjoys frequent sexual flings despite her membership in the Anti-Sex League. I wondered how women who take those risks, aside from the danger of getting arrested for sexcrime, avoid pregnancy given that contraception is illegal. Well, there's a dodge for that, too. Many single women who suspect they're in the early stages of pregnancy seek artsem (artificial insemination). If they've actually conceived already, they're covered; if not, the procedure didn't "take." And it seems to be common knowledge that some women volunteering to bear children for the Party are already pregnant. Newman's perspective flip opens up Orwell's fictional world from these and many other angles. Everybody knows the proper behavior, language, and facial expressions necessary to stay out of trouble, and for most of them it seems to be mainly an act. In one of the few relaxed scenes, workers joke about the intricacies of Newspeak. Julia excuses her linguistic mistakes with the claim that she isn't a bit intellectual, which is true. Winston's fascination with forbidden political, philosophical, and literary topics bores her, although she maintains a facade of enthralled interest.
JULIA answers questions many readers of NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR may puzzle over. Why does she initiate a love affair with Winston, a rather stuffy man twenty years her senior? Does Big Brother, as an individual, literally exist? (Yes.) Is there really an anti-Party underground, and was its demonized alleged leader, Goldstein, a real person? (Yes.) Is Oceania really at war? Yes, we witness the bombed sections of London, though we never find out if the enemy is Eurasia, Eastasia, or neither. We also learn about the lives of the proles, including the thriving black market with which Julia regularly deals. Newman's work delves into potential features of Orwell's fictional world that he either didn't consider or deliberately left outside the frame of his narrative.
Cory Doctorow reasonably classifies this type of novel as fanfic, or as he defines it, "writing stories about other stories that you hate or love or just can't get out of your head." Whether an amateur or professional publication, fanfic expresses the drive to explore shadowed or underdeveloped areas of canonical works, or speculate on how the world of the original looks from the perspective of a different character. ROSENKRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD, which he also mentions, is a prime example of the latter.
Similarly, WIDE SARGASSO SEA, by Jean Rhys, a prequel to JANE EYRE, creates a personality and a backstory for Bertha, Rochester's deranged first wife. In Rhys's re-imagining, Bertha isn't even the name she goes by; Rochester calls her that for the sake of respectability. They arrive in Britain near the end of WIDE SARGASSO SEA. Rhys explores the question of whether she was ever in fact "mad" before being taken from her Caribbean home to England and relegated to nearly solitary confinement in a suite of upstairs rooms (not, contrary to popular impression, the attic).
Doctorow also refers to THE WIND DONE GONE, which a court decreed to be a "parody" of GONE WITH THE WIND. It really isn't, but that classification served as a defense against a charge of plagiarism. When I read THE WIND DONE GONE, I was mildly surprised that Mitchell's estate claimed copyright infringement at all. Alice Randall's book doesn't literally retell the classic novel. It tells the story of the enslaved narrator, Cynara, mixed-race daughter of Mammy and half-sister of Scarlett, with transformative references to the events of GONE WITH THE WIND. None of the white people from the latter are named in THE WIND DONE GONE. Cynara gives Mitchell's characters satirical nicknames, e.g. "Planter" and "Lady" for Scarlett's parents, "Mealy Mouth" for Melanie, "Dreamy Gentleman" for Ashley (I love that one). Scarlett is simply "the Other" or "Her."
Then there's GRENDEL, by John Gardner, wherein the monster reveals his side of the events in BEOWULF. Of course, creating variations on works in the public domain doesn't risk legal problems.
My own all-time favorite professionally published fanfic, the book I'd always wanted to write, is Fred Saberhagen's THE DRACULA TAPE (1975), a retelling of DRACULA in which the Count himself sets the record straight.
Margaret L. Carter
Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.
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