I’m surprised it took this long to happen. 

This weekend author Alice Hoffman took Roberta Silman’s book review to heart and attacked the Boston Globe reviewer through Social Media.  On Sunday night (apparently at about 4 am) Hoffman began a 27 tweet string of vitriol-laced updates to her Twitter account (which was deleted as of this morning) blasting the reviewer and attacking her credibility, her position, and even the reviewer herself.  One of the more shocking tactics that Hoffman used was publishing Silman’s email and phone number for “fans” to respond to the critic in a Tweet that read:

“If you want to tell Roberta Silman off her phone is (redacted). (Email redacted). Tell her what you think of snarky critics.”

Since the account was deleted, the string went into the void along with it, but the author didn’t move fast enough.  You can still read her string of attacks, along with interesting takes on the events, at Gawker, Mediabistro, Entertainment Weekly, The National Post, and the NY Times Entertainment section.  It’s clear that Hoffman realized that she, perhaps, went too far and whether it was through the advice of colleagues, lawyers, or agents, she deleted her Twitter account (@AliceHof).  Smart move, perhaps, but the damage was done.  In this age of instant gratification information systems, her attacks were read and re-posted and re-tweeted almost instantly, and everyone knows that once you open Pandora’s box you can’t delete the box and hope the bad things (i.e. personal attacks, off color humor/statements, unprofessional behavior, etc.) you let out disappear on their own.  No can do, sister.

So what’s the big deal?  Authors have been raging against critics for ages.  Very few, however, took to open forums to attack a critic for doing her job.  The review itself is far for scathing, and Silman mentions her admiration for Hoffman’s previous works.  So the review wasn’t what Hoffman wanted to read.  So what….

In another Tweet, Hoffman lashes out:

“Now any idiot can be a critic. Writers used to review writers. My second novel was reviewed by Ann Tyler. So who is Roberta Silman?”

….Newsflash, Alice….

Idiots “Average people”–otherwise known as YOUR READERS–have always levied criticism of their own.  The difference now is that with the explosion and ease of blogging and social networking sites like LibraryThing and even Facebook, EVERYONE is a critic, and EVERYONE can post reviews for the world to read.  But instead of embracing this opportunity, authors are finding this threatening.  More opinions can be heard.  More negative reviews can be posted.  Forget that more positive reviews can be posted too, and that fan page after fan page can be posted.  Forget that this gives authors, agents, and publishers a unique insight into the worlds and minds of the readers.  None of that matters when compared to the fragile ego of the author. 

Writers used to review writers?  True.  But there have always been literary critics who weren’t commercial fiction writers, or writers at all.  Do you seriously think that all film critics or all food critics made movies or were 5 star chefs?  Get a grip and come down from your pretentious high horse.  You’re not writing academic criticism for a small, very specific group of readers.  You’re writing for the masses.  To make money.  Your objective is to write what people will buy (and want to buy) for a living.  Everyone, artists included, receive criticism on a daily basis and the reality is that it’s not always sunshine and puppies.  You can’t please everyone, and when you lash out it makes you look like a child.  It makes other reviewers not want to read your books for reviews–good or bad–and what happens then?  You fall into obscurity or you are driven to go ask those “idiots” online to give you a review, any review, for the love of all that is holy I need my work to be talked about to sell copies!!!  And guess what… When you come knocking to the doors of people who watched you attack a critic publicly, and personally… no one is going to answer.

And for the record, Roberta Silman is a writer, in every sense.  She’s a critic and published author.

I’m not going to lie.  I’m torn about this one. 

If you haven’t already heard, reclusive author J. D. Salinger is suing “John David California,” aka Fredrik Colting, to stop the U.S. publication of his novel, Sixty Years Later: Coming Through the Rye.   It boils down to these issues:

• Salinger claims that Sixty Years Later is a “rip off” of his classic Catcher in the Rye and filed suit to stop it’s publication in the US citing copyright infringement on his character (Holden Caufiled) and story.
• Salinger has famously guarded the use of the story since publication and has even put a stop to film versions suggested by Spielberg and Zemeckis.
• Salinger claims that Sixty Years Later is an unauthorized sequel to Catcher in the Rye, and therefore infringes on his copyright.
• The text of Sixty Years Later features an elderly “Mr. C” escaping from an institution and wandering around the streets of New York and visiting locations that Catcher in the Rye fans will undoubtedly recognize, along with a few characters from Catcher, but also many new ones.

The problem here is that Colting has filed his own 33 page defense, claiming that his Sixty Years Later  is not a sequel, but a parody of the original and an examination of the interaction between creator (Salinger) and the creation that became the obsession for the majority of his life (Holden Caulfield).  At one point, “Mr. C” escapes after alluding to his past in a mental institution (ala Catcher in the Rye) and wanders around the streets of New York… when he starts to hear the typing of his creator who is seeking out ways to kill him off. 

Uhm… Stranger than Fiction, anyone?

Regardless of whether the writing is good or not, Colting is arguing that his work is protected under the 1st Amendment.  Currently a judge is reviewing the text to decide whether it bears enough weight and difference to be deemed a “parody” or whether it will be stopped in the U.S. because it infringes on Salinger’s copyright of the story, and of the character Holden Caulfield–a notion that isn’t all together set in stone in terms of the law.  Formerly copyrightable characters were primarily visual, and it will be up to this judge to decide whether or not Holden Caulfield is a distinguishable enough character as written by Salinger, to be considered covered under copyright.

I desperately wish I had my hands on a copy of this book, but it’s not available in the U.S. and it’s already sold out on Amazon in the UK. 

Should a new novel that takes a meta-commentary perspective on the interaction between an author and his most notable creation be squashed?  Salinger has succeeded in killing other projects that had to do with Catcher, so why not this one too? 

This differs greatly from the J.K. Rowling debacle (which she won, by the way), in that Colting’s work is another work of fiction… a stand-alone work of fiction (but one could argue that Sixty Years Later, in fact, couldn’t  stand alone without the subject matter having existed).  The descriptions of Sixty Years Later portray the text as a far more intellectually challenging, almost academic, look at the relationship between author and character, but does that give him the right to use a character as well known as Holden Caulfield (even though he never actually names him)?

Part of me understands exactly why Salinger intervened.  I would be angry too if someone took one of my characters and just started writing away without my consent.  That’s why Fan fiction bothers so many authors.  If Colting were writing an academic analysis of the relationship between Salinger and Caulfield, I would say that Salinger has no place stepping forward to stop it.  But that’s not what Sixty Years Later is about.  Is there really that big of a difference between analysis and creative writing?  Should there be?

What about works like the Wind Done Gone, Wicked (any of his adaptations, for that matter), American McGee’s “Alice” video game?  What about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead?   Should it matter that the author of the original has been dead for hundreds of years?  Or that copyright expired?  There needs to be a definitive clarification…

I still don’t know where I stand, even after thinking it through.  What’s your perspective on this issue?

Quote of the Day:

“There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.”

~Harold Pinter