On popularity,
branding, and when an author becomes a product.
Much of what I
wrote in this early
2013 series on popular fiction would apply to V.C. Andrews (1923-1986), the
lifelong resident of Portsmouth, Virginia who became late in her life one of
the most popular American novelists
of the last quarter of the 20th century. Andrews’ debut novel, Flowers
in the Attic (1979), quickly became a bestseller and has remained a
mega-hit ever since; she would publish a novel a year for
the remainder of her life, each a bestseller in its own right. Andrews’ books
and themes combined the Gothic mysteries of an Edgar Allan Poe with the
tangled, incestuous family secrets and histories of a William Faulkner, but in
an intensely readable style that was all her own. “I think I tell a whopping
good story,” she once noted
in an interview, “And I don’t drift away from it a great deal into descriptive
material.”
Andrews died of
breast cancer in 1986, and yet has published more than 60 books
in the quarter century since. These aren’t mostly posthumously released books
by Andrews, however (she was prolific in her brief time as a novelist, but not
that prolific), but rather ghost-written works; the Andrews estate hired
horror novelist Andrew Neiderman to complete the manuscripts that were
unfinished at the time of her death, and Neiderman has gone on to publish more
than 50 additional novels, all under the name and in the style of “V.C.
Andrews.” Indeed, the Andrews estate apparently never intended to release
Neiderman’s name or identity, and he was only identified by outside
investigations; as far as the official narrative goes, all of the books have
still been written by “V.C. Andrews.” Andrews’ books aren’t the only popular
series for whom this kind of posthumous branding has occurred—see the Hardy Boys
and Nancy
Drew empires, among others—but given the very brief 7-year period in which
she published her own books, it’s a particularly striking case.
It’s fair to say
that all truly popular authors become brands at a certain point, not only in
our own era (Tom
Clancy, Dan Brown) but in earlier periods as well (Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain). But it’s also
fair to say that there’s something different about the case of an author who
published eight books while she was alive and has “published” more than seven
times as many since her death. Those eight books unquestionably established
Andrews’ popularity, as well as the style and stories that drew readers in and
kept them coming back, and I’m not trying to downplay her work or role. But
more than twenty-five years after her death, with no end in sight to the books
and series that bear her name, “V.C. Andrews” has become far more of a
commercial product, a business, than an author. Which, the cynic in me might
say, makes this Virginia voice perhaps the most telling of all those I’ve traced
this week.
Guest Post this
weekend,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Voices from your home you’d highlight?
I wrote a book report on _Petals on the Wind_ in 6th grade and got a letter home to my parents. Just saying. I was a shitty kid.
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