Members of an on-line journalists’ forum this week complained about the wealth of recent weather stories in Canadian dailies. Guess what? In Canada, in winter, it gets cold and it snows. Get over it, they spat.
What can we do but comply? After all, winter lost its luster many sub-zero weeks ago. And since physical escape is impossible, the mental escape afforded by fiction seems an appropriate journey.
Let’s sink into an easy chair and open the pages of equally comfortable old books that soothe us with their flow and familiarity…
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Hey, wait a minute! There’s a prequel to Anne of Green Gables?
So much for winter torpor, because this news, released just before the 100th anniversary of Anne of Green Gables’ original publication, has shaken this Anne fan to the core.
Media report that author Budge Wilson will soon release Before Green Gables, the story of Anne’s parents and the famous red-haired girl’s early life.
How many hours have been spent by readers the world over, exploring the trials of Anne as she moved from Avonlea to island to house of dreams, and beyond?
What would L.M. Montgomery make of this? Ditto the many fans of the Anne series? And what can one say about the gumption of Ms. Wilson, who took on the task of writing such a book?
This revelation has even more of a sting than one involving another favoured author, Carolyn Keene.
Some of us can still recall the trauma of learning that Keene, author of the famous Nancy Drew girl detective series, was not a real person.
The early Nancy Drew books were written by Mildred Wirt Benson, a reporter for the Toledo Blade. Benson was followed by a number of other ghostwriters.
Uncovering this subterfuge might have been a challenge for the titian-haired Nancy Drew herself. But apparently it wasn’t much of a secret, except to young fans who never questioned Keene’s existence.
And while we’re on the subject of authors, what’s with Robert Ludlum? The man has been dead since 2001 but has published over a dozen books since his demise. Apparently he has the staying power of a prairie hog farmer.
Turns out, once again, that naive fans of Ludlum’s work were among the last to realize that ghostwriters have been polishing up the author’s old notes and manuscripts.
And they’ve been doing so as part of a plan partially formulated by Ludlum himself, that old spymaster. Egad!
You know, this idea of escapism through fiction isn’t proving too relaxing after all. Let’s go back to complaining about winter.
