When I first read his email, I did a little stunned look around my empty office (are you writing me?!), and then I wrote back a hearty: "Of course!" The Three Musketeers is one of my favorite subjects. I get eye rolls when I bring home a new translation from the library, or a graphic novel, or watch the Oliver Reed/Michael York/Richard Chamberlain/Frank Finlay version of the movie for the ?? time. (I skip to the parts about Athos.)
I'd like to thank Dr. Bradley Stephens of the School of Modern Languages at the University of Bristol, UK, for seeking for my input. He studies and writes about romantic literature and is looking at adaptations of romantic literature.
Here's our Q&A:
Dumas |
JF: Dr. Stephens, To begin, let me humbly state that whatever comes of my novels is only possible because of the sweat and popularity of Dumas. When I started my first book (2009), I had no intention of riding his coattails. My sole purpose for writing was to please myself and take a character I loved and breathe new life into him. I'd be naive to think that I won't be judged on my choice to write from Dumas' classic work, but I've written my stories out of a reverence for Dumas and his work rather than my wish to exploit them.
BS: I wondered firstly whether you saw your fiction as a form of adaptation in itself? Various terms might be used to describe your writing -- 'new chapter', 'sequel', 'spin-off', 'fan fiction' -- and I wondered how you yourself as a writer would classify your work.
JF:This
classification business puzzles me some. Yes, I do think the broad term
'adaptation' is correct. I'm playing with and embellishing the life of
an existing fictional character. I do so because the work inspired me.
That The Three Musketeers has survived and is still read is icing.
I've
primarily tried to fill in the blanks. Two of the novels in my series
develop
the backstory of Athos. He's the character I most identified with when I
read Dumas, and in many ways, Athos was as important in The Three Musketeers
as d'Artagnan. I state this because of the major role he plays in the
second half of the book and his connection with the pivotal character
Milady, whom Athos was married to prior to the novel.
These
connections between Milady and Athos made me ask a lot of questions.
How did they meet? Why did he marry her? What kind of love did he have
for her that made him later shun women? What did she do to him to make
him want to kill her, this woman
with the heart of a poet? So much of this psychological dynamic doesn't
get explored or explained in the original text. And that's not a flaw
of the original work. But it IS my purpose. I look deeper into the
character of Athos and understand what happened to make him who he is. Think his thoughts. Feel his feelings. Recount his story. Dumas doesn't. So, I wrote it (and still am).
My first book Blood, Love & Steel (a working title, I may end up just calling it Athos) is a sequel in the traditional sense. It picks up the summer after the end of The Three Musketeers.
The four have been to La Rochelle, have executed Milady and have
dispersed. A pretty heady time, I think, for the man who killed the only
woman he ever loved, now bereft of his constant companions. Prime for
an interesting twist of events. The novel I'm completing now, Athos and Milady: In the Beginning,
is all backstory. It tells the story of how a younger Athos met Milady,
fell in love, was betrayed and eventually why he breaks, which, by the
way, leads him to become a Musketeer. I get chills just thinking about
all the possibilities. So, Athos and Milady can be considered a prequel to The Three Musketeers.
BS: A second question that immediately came to mind was: to what extent did
Dumas' own sequels to his novel influence your approach to Athos?
JF: The book Twenty Years After has informed my first novel quite a bit, at least one particular plot point. In Twenty Years After, Athos has happily resumed his noble persona with a son. A son! My God, what happened that this heartbroken man would fall in love and produce an heir? That answer is glossed over in Twenty Years After and leaves a lot of room for a Musketeer fan to take some liberties, which I do.
My
sequel is a romance. Athos falls in love with a new character of my
creation and his melancholy over Milady is finally broken. Because I
created a new main character/lover for Athos, a serious student of Dumas
might wag a finger, but most people will never read Twenty Years After (I'm still trudging through it). It and Ten Years Later just don't have the same verve as the first novel. But in most plot nuances, I stuck to the Dumas version.
BS: Does Athos' vulnerability as a heartbroken man lend him an irresistible allure to readers?
JF: I'm
in love with that man. No question. I'd have to be to want to write
three books about him. He was mysterious and strong and flawed. Probably
a looker, too. At least, I can dream. I have to give some credit here
to Oliver Reed, who played Athos in the Salkind movies. I saw them when I
was a teenager. He made Athos real for me first, before I ever read the
book in my 30s. But the book, it rounds out the
elements of a great
man. Underneath
the bravado of a musketeer, Athos was deeply sensitive. I paint him as
such. Let's hope readers find that I've done it in a tasteful,
reverential way. (Although, I'm going to raise the flag now, the book of
how Athos and Milady meet is full of sex.)
BS: I wanted to ask you what the story meant to you personally,
and why it is you think that different cultures across national borders
keep coming back to this novel.
---
You can find Dr. Stephens' profile here: http://www.bris.ac.uk/sml/people/bradley-c-stephens/index.html. You can also find a recent blogpost of his on the Huffington Post, which looks at the reception of Les Misérables: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bradley-stephens/finger-pointing-and-flag-_b_2345226.html
He also took part in a panel at the French Institute in London (with the new film's screenwriter and a West End star) on the novel's transition to stage and screen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEtTaSgs2F4 and he also wrote a new introduction for The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Signet Classics / Penguin USA, 2010).
Thanks again, Dr. Stephens.
Fun interview. Must be so exciting to get some buzz over your books. Question: Do you write your novels in contemporary language, or a style more cohesive with the originals?
ReplyDeleteThat's an interesting question. I think the original novels are accessible to the average reader, language-wise. The translations I've seen don't seem arcane. The translators may have made accommodations, or Dumas wrote a book that was easy to read, which is what I think. He was writing for the masses. (He liked the word "Zounds!") My first draft was fuller of language flourishes and stilted conversation. But after several revisions, much of that has been edited out. Nonetheless, I couldn't very well write metaphors such as "he dashed from the room like a rocket." No rockets back then.
DeleteI'll confess, I read a very old copy of Three Musketeers back in High School, but I seem to remember an older style at that point, so I was just curious :) I'm very curious to read your books, and hope we can find a chance to hang out again some day soon :)
DeleteI don't blame you for falling in love with the Athos of Oliver Reed's creation. I tried to upload a picture from the movie you mentioned, but I'm not savvy enough for that. However, I urge others to look it up. Those eyes would melt the Antarctic.
ReplyDeleteYou've inspired me! I'll upload a pic of him. Whew, baby. One of my guilty pleasures. Along with chocolate.
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