Why do people dislike undead writers?
Greetings and salutations,
I was recently enraged to see a blogger demolishing one of the more recent Robert Ludlum books. He hated it, and was extremely vocal about it. I would normally shrug and say that he’s absolutely right and that any doorstop thriller with latin letters in the title is little more than lowbrow entertainment akin to Big Brother. If you read something like that, don’t come crying to me if it hurts your brain.
And yet, this blogger managed to get my attention because he snootily implied (actually it was more like a declaration than an implication) that the fact that Mr. Ludlum died in 2001 and the book was published in 2005 had had a negative effect on the quality. Essentially, he said that dying had affected the quality of his writing for the worse. Reading between the lines, he was saying that the publisher was milking the name of a best-selling author, now sadly deceased, to make a few extra bucks.
I have to take issue with this reviewer on a number of counts. In the first place, the publishing industry needs to get money wherever it can. If this means paying a ghost writer to write under an illustrious name, so be it – it’s a time-honored tradition (or did you think that Franklin W. Dixon has been alive and active since the dawn of time?).
My second problem with it is much more serious. Simply stated, the assumption that a dead writer cannot keep writing is ridiculous. Why does the reviewer assume that Mr. Ludlum has been replaced by a ghost writer (space considerations mean that I have no room to rant about the prejudiced term “ghost writer”)? Why can’t he just accept that he’s joined the ranks of the undead, and is happily typing away, rotting fingers smearing the keyboard?
This kind of bigotry keeps many promising artists from letting themselves be converted to undead, and makes life so difficult for us. Do you really need to be alive to write? Or to answer the phone at a call-center? Or to fly a Jumbo jet? Of course not! And yet, the undead are routinely passed over for these positions just on the basis of a few flakes of rotting skin and an insatiable appetite for human flesh. The pitchfork-wielding peasants are just the icing on this cake of bigotry.
I applaud Mr. Ludlum for his continued dedication to his craft. The blame for any lessening in the quality of his books can be placed firmly on the doorstep of the publishing house, which wants longer and longer books, quality be damned. May the skin on his fingers take forever to rot – he is a standard all the undead, be they vampires, zombies, ghouls or “various and sundry” need to rally behind.
Best regards,
Hieronymous
