Having several Russian scholars in our midst and being committed to translating Russian literature (speaking of which… I will blog soon on the Rossica Prize, for which one of our titles has been shortlisted), we at Hesperus have been observing the reactions to HarperCollins’s, ahem, ‘original version’ of War and Peace with great interest.
For those that have not yet come across this particular source of controversy in the literary world, HarperCollins recently published a version of War and Peace which is some 500 pages shorter than the version which has graced our bookshelves for so many years. HarperCollins’s is based on an edition that has already caused something of an uproar in Russia: it’s drawn from a ‘first draft’ of the text, sketched by Tolstoy himself, which cuts out the ’solemn philosophical wanderings’ of the novel to leave solely the ‘drama and tragedy’ (Harper Collins’s words).
Call me an old bore, but I can’t help but worry about the concept of reinstating early drafts of works as viable alternatives to the finished products. I’ve felt enough of a fool myself on the odd occasion that I’ve mistakenly sent out an unfinished draft of an email, so to have the sketches of your life’s most arduous work passed off as being on a par with the final product would be, frankly, a bit of a kick in the balls, not to mention the fact that it totally short changes the reader. I can see the value of publishing reconstructed drafts of texts that were left unfinished, or even, for scholars, of studying this early draft in juxtaposition with the final version, but to propose that this rehashed model could act as a replacement for the original work seems to set a fairly worrying precedent. I can’t help but see it as a manipulative piece of publishing which will do very little either for readers or for literary legacy…
ER
Agree. Harper Collins hope to make a fast buck out of publishing Tolstoy’s first draft of ‘War and Peace’.
It would have been better for HC to call the book by a different title, with the caveat it was only a draft, and not the finished and altogether different classic.
But I do note there is a trend amongst publishers to offer up literature lite. Weidenfeld & Nicolson plan to issued Compact Editions of literary classics in May, including Anna Karenina, Vanity Fair, David Copperfield, The Mill on the Floss, Moby Dick and Wives and Daughters.
And on another note, Sony is offering three and half minute versions of TV shows such as ‘Charlie’s Angels’, ‘T J Hooker’ and ‘Starksy and Hutch’.
Is all this bite sized literature and pop culture a sign of a global attention deficit disorder? Or , a lack of discipline in learning?
Hmmm…what was the question?
Regards,
Paul Gallagher
I do agree that the fashion for abridging classics is a worrying one, but I would draw a distinction between ‘bite sized literature’ and artificially abridged literature… here at Hesperus we specialise in the novella, with most of our publications being roughly one hundred pages in length. The difference between this and the ‘compact editions’ you speak of is obviously that we maintain the integrity of the works we publish; they are fully formed works of art as conceived of by the artist, rather than works that have been lopped and chopped at the will of the publisher.
I do think that, in today’s culture, there is definitely a need for more accessible works of literature; shorter works that can be dipped into and out of at will. But there is enough literature that fits that bill in and of itself without desecrating well-loved classics.
I don’t think I’ve ever sounded so pompous – to be reassured of my immaturity, please read the post on DickensWorld!
Ellie Robins, Hesperus Press.