Christopher Paolini. In his own words.
The kid should probably be forgiven, as he has been made a con-star in his teens, and is a child millionaire, and you KNOW that kind of thing fucks you up. But still. Ugh.
I won't even get into the fact that the Paolini sees Terry frickin' Brooks as a major inspiration, and that some reviews have lambasted his book, Eragon, for just the kind of lack of originality which has always plagued Brooks' work.
Link via Nick Mamatas.
Monday, July 26, 2004
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2 comments:
I'm not sure "the kid" deserves such a beating at such an early stage of his career (and his life). I'm pretty sure that the publishing house that decided to make him a teen-millionaire did so for a reason - the market, after all, is flooded with generic fantasy novels, so there must have been SOMETHING that made his book stand out. It's worth pointing, I think, that there isn't much original about the Harry Potter novels either - they walk through mostly-familiar territories, but they do it very well.
I personally haven't read Paolini's book, but I won't pass judgement on it before I did.
As for the quotes given in the link - even if they are correct (keeping in mind that they are reported in a somewhat cynical manner, rather than coming directly from the source) - let's keep in mind that this guy is 18 years old, an age in which people usually think they know everything. Hell, I'm past 18 for 8 years now, and I'm still POSITIVE that I know everything. And let's not forget the amount of stupid things coming regularly from the mouths of far more respectable and older authors (no, I'm not going to name any - learned my lesson from the Mieville post, thanks very much).
-Raz
One thing he's got going for him is that 14+ is the RIGHT age for doing generic quest fantasy; No performance drugs in the world will be able to give weary hacks like Terry Brooks and Peter David the sheer enthusiasm for the genre that an adolescent boy can muster. And why shouldn't someone who would be the ideal reader (demographically) also be the right writer for this stuff?
On the other hand, as Charlie Higson remarks in The Guardian (apropos Comics): "Why does the novel maintain its exalted status as the pinacle of human achievement? Any idiot can write one: you just need patience and a massive ego."
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