Frazier tells Newsweek about a trip to Cherokee, North Carolina, "I came over a couple of weeks ago to meet with Chief Hicks and to say, 'I grew up here. I grew up on land that had been your land. I remember finding arrowheads in cornfields as a kid.' What I was interested in was not telling their story, but the story of this piece of country, that transition from their people to my people. I just said, 'I hope this book will be seen as the work of a good neighbor'." Frazier later had a meeting about a translation project he's funding to render portions of the novel into Cherokee, Part of an initiative to keep the language alive.
September 11, 2006
Big money for Native book
Newsweek Interview: Charles Frazier AuthorIn "Thirteen Moons," Frazier returns with a mesmerizing tale about a white man fighting to save a Cherokee tribe's home and who for days, spoke nothing but Cherokee. By April 2002, Frazier had already done some legwork on the book, but knew what he'd written was too woolly to show prospective publishers. Instead, he wrote a one-page proposal for "Thirteen Moons" before coffee one morning. Random House paid $8.25 million for it, and producer Scott Rudin ponied up $3 million for the movie rights.
Frazier tells Newsweek about a trip to Cherokee, North Carolina, "I came over a couple of weeks ago to meet with Chief Hicks and to say, 'I grew up here. I grew up on land that had been your land. I remember finding arrowheads in cornfields as a kid.' What I was interested in was not telling their story, but the story of this piece of country, that transition from their people to my people. I just said, 'I hope this book will be seen as the work of a good neighbor'." Frazier later had a meeting about a translation project he's funding to render portions of the novel into Cherokee, Part of an initiative to keep the language alive.
Frazier tells Newsweek about a trip to Cherokee, North Carolina, "I came over a couple of weeks ago to meet with Chief Hicks and to say, 'I grew up here. I grew up on land that had been your land. I remember finding arrowheads in cornfields as a kid.' What I was interested in was not telling their story, but the story of this piece of country, that transition from their people to my people. I just said, 'I hope this book will be seen as the work of a good neighbor'." Frazier later had a meeting about a translation project he's funding to render portions of the novel into Cherokee, Part of an initiative to keep the language alive.
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6 comments:
Writerfella here --
That blurb is a bit misleading as Frazier's book is ABOUT Natives, not by a Native. But the article proves that Frazier himself likely would argue the point. He quickly would lose that argument.
Reasons being that whatever he would have written past COLD MOUNTAIN would have been one or the other, art or artifice. He now has given in to the latter. That his book is about Natives is by mere mischance of his research; it as easily could have been about the Snallygaster or the KKK. All because he can research up a given book's contents and not truly have to write about people who live and breathe and walk about and bleed and die in his 'stories' and thus live on in the readers' minds when they come away. Believe me, the two subjects above are givens and those two books are coming.
Soon, he will become a name that you will see or hear many times, like Frederick Forsyth, Stephen King, Michael Crichton, or John Grisham, to name a few. Seen and heard many times in the books and in the films made from those books, multimillionaires all, all too willing to research for the rich and to steal from the poor...
Any real worth to THIRTEEN MOONS is what any individual puts into it themselves, by buying it when it becomes a best-seller, and/or by seeing the film when it comes out, but no more than that and only for that heartbeat. For the writers of best-sellers are that peculiar clutch of craftsmen who write, not to have written, for those who read, not to have read. It is not logical, but it most often is true.
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
I take it that you do not like Frazier (along with any author whose works are widely accepted). You did accuse him of theft along the way. What did he steal?
Writerfella here --
History, simply because he pretends it was his to own. Understand that I do not simply like or dislike Frazier, as I have not read him nor have I seen the film, COLD MOUNTAIN. Moreso it is that I as a writer recognize a principle that I scrupulously and assiduously avoid.
My Animated STAR TREK, 'How Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth,' is about the Mayan god, Kukulkan. It won a 1975 Emmy Award and went to the Fifteenth International Television Film Festival of Monte Carlo as the American entry in Children's Television. The Kiowa version of Kukulkan is the Thunderbird but Kiowas now have been found to be related to the Mayans, even sharing a pictographic language and the building of mud pyramids as sites of worship. Did I steal history and pretend that it was mine to own? Hardly...
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
Well, I've written about Indian people in my comics even though I'm not Native. So I don't agree with those who say it's "exploitation" and it shouldn't be done.
On the other hand, I proceed with great caution, voluminous research, and the help of Native advisers. And I never claim my work is anything other than what it is.
The terms "theft" and "stealing" just don't apply the best here to situations where at worst someone is misrepresenting something. You can't steal history, unless maybe you have Doc Brown's wonderful Delorean.
Frazier and I are both writing fiction about Indians. You could argue that this is a form of exploitation or "stealing." Assuming we make money from it, you could say we're profiting from the pain of others.
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