Rhett Butler's People

[Ruthful]

...or was anyone else psyched when they heard about this:

http://www.rhettbutlerspeople.com/

I saw some hardbacked copies in the "New Fiction" section of B&N a few weeks ago and did a double take.

Loved Gone with the Wind.

Loved Scarlet.

I'm totally getting this when I can accumulate the sufficient cash.

I think it's still over thirty bucks with my Members Discount card though, so it might take a while.

[Jean]

Ruthful: can you think of a more, er, revealing title for your thread? I'll be happy to change it when you come up with one.

[Ruthful]

Oops.

Sorry about that.

I suppose you could alter the thread title to the name of the book itself, i.e. Rhett Butler's People.

Or "Gone with the Wind III" if you're in an humorous mood.

:idea:

[Jean]

http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k291/mishemplushem/Facilitation/0134-bear.gif
not that humorous. Especially since there's been some Scarlett's Daughter, or maybe Scarlett's Childhood, or lots of similarly dubious stuff.

[Ruthful]

Believe me, The Ballad of [edit] Katie Colum O'Hara has yet to be written!


:pirate:

The Wind Done Gone is still carried in some book stores, although you can usually only find a single copy. The fact that this story hasn't gone into the public domain after more than six decades-and many, many years since its original author's death-really frustrates me, even though I don't think they had a legitimate case against Alice Randall-whose parody did indeed suck-to begin with.

I'm glad they got rid of those idiotic restrictions on plot for this sequel. I loved Scarlett, but to tell a writer portraying the postbellum South that he can't allude to any interracial relationships is not only absurd from a creative perspective, but incredibly absurd on a pratical level.

[steph]

I saw it at the library a couple of weeks ago, had never heard of it, but got it anyway.
I really enjoyed it.

[Ruthful]

I saw it at the library a couple of weeks ago, had never heard of it, but got it anyway.
I really enjoyed it.

Good.

The other two books in this series are also worth reading, especially the original Gone with the Wind.

The Civil War binds together a lot of loose strands in these stories.

[steph]

Yea, I really need to reread GWTW, it has been several years.
I did not care for Scarlett very much, however.

[Matt]

:lol:

My wife felt the same way Steph--she also had a little trouble reading the original because of that pre-civil war southern slang.

[Ruthful]

:lol:

My wife felt the same way Steph--she also had a little trouble reading the original because of that pre-civil war southern slang.

I know a lot of people ripped into the sequel-some of their critiques are accurate, but I don't necessarily agree with them all. For example, people rag on Ripley's decision to let Scarlett be enlisted in the Fenian cause-Florence King really tore into this on National Review-but when you look at her reaction to similar turbulent circumstances in Gone with the Wind it really doesn't strike the reader as much of a stretch.

I thought the novel was panned unfairly-one of the things I don't like about the press releases surrounding this novel is the fact that they're trying to distance themselves from Scarlett, which I think was a great work of fiction. Even though I'm glad the Mitchell estate is dropping its death grip on the material I don't think it should disavow the book by Alexandra Ripley.