| The Eddings Myth | Contributor: Martin | Posted: 12/02/07 | 14:56 |
| Features - Author Focus | |
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Imagine falling into bed with the lover of your dreams, and then you wake up the next morning to discover your dream-lover is not only a... shall we say "professional companion", but has stolen your wallet as well as your trust.
That’s the feeling many unfortunate readers of David and Leigh Eddings may have experienced after loyally buying The Rivan Codex, the 13th book in the world introduced by The Belgariad, and perhaps the most breathtakingly cynical exercise in fantasy and SF publishing since L Ron Hubbard founded Scientology. In the opening of Codex, the Eddings smugly tell their readers that the inspiration for The Belgariad was money, pure and simple. Inspired by the ongoing popularity of The Lord of the Rings, the Eddings decided to try their hand at fantasy. David Eddings, the more public member of the husband and wife writing team, gloats in the book that he poured all of his expertise as an English teacher into his opening shot at fantasy, Pawn of Prophecy, and anybody who gets through the first chapter will be so hooked by all the mythic and cultural "sleepers" in the story that Eddings has successfully "got them". For the legions of Eddings fans, who have made the pair one of the best-selling fantasy authors in the world and fallen in love with the distinctive style, lovable characters and simple good-over-evil message, this is a slap in the face. In fact, it’s more: it's a public boast that readers have been cynically conned for their money. The Eddings are even bold enough to publish a "peek" behind the authors’ artifice to show just how it was done. Just why the Eddings felt compelled to tell their readers their books were written for money, not love, is a mystery, and it is possible the pair felt some strange sense of guilt. One possible theory is that the pair jumped into the game to make money and found themselves actually engrossed and convinced by their own world-building. And that's a problem if you're an academic. Because the tone of the preface seems like it was written to convince literary snobs that the Eddings are not really serious about this fantasy thing. This appears at least plausible as it is hard to believe that the novels would have kept coming after The Mallorean if more than sales and advances had been the sole objective. There's not a lot of the creator's love in the later books. |
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