I heard a segment on NPR a few weeks ago (Sorry, no cite. Anybody?) about someone who’d studied just this phenomenon. He said that there are two different truly creative types. One is the kind who comes, unheralded, out of nowhere and for the next ten or fifteen years does the best work of her/his life. Then the muse says ta-ta and he/she either quits or declines into self-parody. The other type is the plug-away-at-it grinder who slowly gets better and better until, fairly late in life, ripens into a creative force.
This seems to be the answer to the “what the hell happened to ____” question. You can fill in the blank with the O.P.'s Elton John as well as Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, and Paul Simon (to name a few).
Being a child of the Sixties, I can only say “Thank God for Heroin overdoses.” Elsewise we might now be subject to Jimi Hendrix rewriting “Purple Haze” as a tribute to Al Gore or Janis Joplin waddling up to the microphone to croak out “Piece of my Heart” for the millionth time. Yikes.
We’ll be joining the torch-wielding mob in front of Mr. King’s house, then? I’ll bring the tar, you get the feathers.
I nominate those authors who, though they might still have some ideas in them, keep returning to a series that they’ve long-since wrung dry, but keep on churning out new material for because it’s a consistent seller. If I ever see that Spider Robinson’s put another Callahan book on the shelves, I’m going to just keep walking.
I first encounted Ender and Bean in the much more well-written novella version of Ender’s Game. When I read the novel, it just had so many WTF moments for me, I really couldn’t get into it. If the story had come to me new, I probably wouldn’t feel so strongly about it, but things like adding the whole MMORPG thing to the novel really detracted from the story to my mind.
For that matter, I tend to think that Orson Scott Card writes great novellas and novellettes. His longer works usually leave me scratching my head.
Actually, given the premise of the original Riverworld books - I don’t think it’s an automatic down check. You’ve got a story about a world where every human being who’d died from the dawn of creation until 1983 (IIRC) was re-incarnated. And they could die, and would be re-incarnated again and again. Titling a book in a series dealing with such metaphysical underpinnings to indicate the rulers of such a world were gods doesn’t seem an automatic shark-jumping to me.
Mind you, this is not a defense of Gods of Riverworld - I agree it stunk to high heaven. I’m just not convinced that a good story couldn’t be told with that title.
For all I know, later issues of Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Strikes Again might be wonderful. I 'll never know because I hurled the first issue from me with a choked cry that he could produce such drek and I didn’t want to risk it contaminating the earlier classic Dark Knight Returns . And produced at a time when I think he was also doing the excellent *Sin City * stuff. Baffling.
I would also include “Mostly Harmless” by Douglas Adams which feels downright angry, as if he has been forced to write it against his will. “You want another Hitchhiker novel? I’ve GIVE you another Hitchhiker novel…” seems to be the underlying message of the author. In a way, I sympathised - for me, the Dirk Gently novels were wonderful and I would far rather have read another one of those anyway.
I’d actually disagree with that part of your sentiment - I still haven’t really read Tehanu, partly because of hearing reviews like that one… but I skipped over it and found ‘The other wind’ a fascinating revisit of the original Earthsea trilogy, turning several things that we’d originally ‘known’ about that world on their head, but in a GOOD way!
I have heard a few folks call Eric Clapton’s later version of Layla to be better than the original Derek and the Dominoes version. No, he turned a great rock song into an insipid ballad.
Robert Asprin’s Myth Adventures series. The original series was great in the first few books. By Sweet Myth-try of Life, it had degenerated into Skeve walking from room to rooom so he could receive lectures from other characters on whatever Asprin an his therapist were talking about that week.
The Aspirin got together with Jody Lynn Nye, and seemes to have forgotten that this series was supposed to be funny.
Rhett Miller, of the Old 97s. He wrote a song called “Question” that appears on the 97s disc Satellite Rides; it’s a beautiful, understated solo acoustic take that is absolutely perfect as recorded.
Then, for his second solo album The Believer, he decided to re-record it, but with a completely superfluous string section and lots of unnecessary vocal soaring. It’s horrible, and thankfully it’s at the end of the disc and easily ignored.
When I saw him in Louisville, he did it during a brief solo acoustic set, but he was completely over the top with it and threw in a verse in French. Not good. (They also had a punked-up version of “Barrier Reef” that was best forgotten about.)
By the time I saw him several months later in Cincinnati, he was doing a version of it with the full band. Just awful.
Don’t get me wrong–Rhett is still awesome, and my man-crush is pretty undeniable. But it’s almost like a game of “How can Rhett fuck up ‘Question’ this time?” If he’s that tired of the song, he should just stop playing it.
I thought we’d agreed that everyone would stop mentioning Frank Miller’s rape of the Gotham Knights, and in return I would not go into a murderous rage and destroy France?
Please don’t destroy France yet. I haven’t been to Paris as of yet and very much would like to. May I suggest Ireland? Not really interested in visiting there, sorry.
I agree with Mostly Harmless & Robert Asprin, and Stephen King is practically the definition of this.
[OT]But I am so at least postpone whatever nefarious plans you may have for the Emerald Isle. Besides, it couldn’t be any worse than what the English did to them for 700 years. France, I don’t care about so go ahead. Just leave out Brittany and Normandy since, like Ireland, those are two places I’d like to visit soon.[/OT]
As for the OP’s topic, does anybody aside from Mark Twain completists know about “Tom Sawyer, Detective”?
Oh, God, such a disappointment that series has turned out to be. After the last piece of drek, I don’t even care anymore. If I happen to come across the new book in the library one of these years I might borrow it, but the days of rushing out on the day of publication and buying the hardback are over.