Word: ripleyisms
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Before Alexandra Ripley presents this not-so-astonishing revelation in Scarlett: The Sequel to Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, the author hauls Scarlett from Tara to Atlanta to Charleston to Savannah, finally depositing the nomadic heroine in Ireland for 500 pages before allowing her to recapture Rhett...
Once again publicity foreplay is more exciting than what goes on between the covers. The managed anticipation that preceded Scarlett's publication was enlivened by the intricacies of copyright law and the persistent, though unconfirmed, rumor that Sidney Sheldon had been a candidate before the Mitchell estate settled on Ripley, 57, a native of Charleston, S.C., and author of three solid historical romances. There was also the confirmed rumor that Ripley threatened to quit when told by her editor that the first draft of Scarlett was not commercial enough. Finally, there was the author's disarming candor. "Margaret Mitchell...
...takes the reader only a few pages to realize that Ripley has had to / forfeit the novelist's right to create her own characters. Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara sprang from everything Mitchell knew and felt about a time that was still fresh in her region's memory. Ripley's self-imposed handicap shows in the dialogue. Mitchell gave her sardonic hero the best lines, hard- bitten and vivid in the Raymond Chandler style. "I've seen eyes like yours above a dueling pistol," he says to Scarlett. "They evoke no ardor in the male breast." Ripley's Rhett...
...Scarlett wants to get in touch with her Irish roots, and Ripley wants to get her away from the freed slaves and budding Klansmen of the Reconstruction South. Pushing a complex reality under the Old Sod solves the problem of having to create substantial roles for black characters. When hired to write the book, Ripley insisted on a contemporary treatment of race, specifically the avoidance of dialect. Her method is to retain speech patterns while providing elocution lessons...
While Scarlett errs on the side of political correctness, Gone With the Wind -- its minstrel-show dialogue intact -- still sells like buttermilk biscuits. The irony does not seem to disturb the Mitchell estate. Ripley, a seasoned professional, apparently understood what she was getting paid so well to do: write the book that was doomed from conception to be endlessly compared to the original. Scarlett is the South's new Lost Cause...