One-hit wonders
April 22, 2009
I came across this interesting little read today.
I couldn’t help but wonder if Anne Sewell’s and Slyvia Plath’s inclusion in such a list is a tad unfair. Given the permanence of death, is it fair to consider someone a one-hit wonder if they are physically incapable of producing anymore work?
April 23, 2009 at 5:14 pm
Calling Oscar Wilde or Sylvia Plath or Emily Bronte “one hit wonders” because they only happened to write one novel seems bizarre, too.
April 25, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Agreed, Amateur Reader!
April 27, 2009 at 7:27 pm
There’s really something pejorative about the term “one-hit wonder.” It seems to imply that the artist made other attempts that flopped.
It’s tragic when a great artist dies suddenly; confusing when a great artist commits suicide; and utterly mystifying when a great writer like Salinger or Harper Lee just… quits writing. Then there’s Henry Roth, who quit for decades and then suddenly popped out with another masterpiece in his senior years.
What would really be interesting would be to have a literary contest encouraging people to write the “lost books” of one of these “one-hit” authors. Or at least come up with plots and titles. What do you think?
April 30, 2009 at 11:36 am
I agree with you about the term one-hit wonder. I know its very purist of me, but it kind of annoys me that the worth of a book or writer increasingly centres upon their ability to ’shift units’, or their performance on a ‘hits’ list. If the sales figures of their next book don’t outstrip its predecessor then they’ve somehow failed. Imagine the pressure they must feel. Hmm… well that turned into a bit of a rant!
I really like you’re idea! It would interesting to see how so many imaginations would interpret a writers work and what they feel would have been the direction they might have taken. It’s a bit like counter history – playing with all this ‘what if’. Whose lost novels would you write?
July 1, 2009 at 3:45 pm
How is Plath a one-hit wonder? Didn’t she, you know, write a load of poetry or was that conveniently forgotten? Is not like she never wrote again after The Bell Jar. Plus, isn’t there a short story collection.
I’ve always thought that it was quality over quantity but I must have been mistaken all these years.
Oh wait it’s The Times, what do you expect.