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When I read that Margaret Mitchell's heirs had
commissioned a sequel to Gone with the Wind,
I
speculated.
My most promising plot: Rhett goes west and finds a rich
silver mine. He and his partner, Hod Tabor, compete for the
affections of Elizabeth McCourt Baby
Doe.
Scarlett then appears in Leadville with Ashley, who's become a greedy lawyer without the influence of sweet Melanie. They found a flaw in a treaty, cut a deal with the Utes, and now own all of Fryer Hill. Only by charming and seducing Scarlett can Rhett avoid ruin. Scarlett, though, has everything she wants: Ashley and unspeakable wealth.
Would they end up together? I couldn't decide. I'd be in
the same spot Margaret Mitchell was when Rhett said,
Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.
Judging by what the reviewers say of Scarlett,
the authorized sequel by Alexandra Ripley, the story ended
in the right place the first time. Any mutual future for
Rhett and Scarlett should be left to the reader's
imagination.
Granted, the original appeared back when books left something to the imagination. Good books end where they ought to end.
At the end of Catch-22,
do we care whether
Yossarian makes it to Sweden? No; it's it enough that he
has a shred of hope to escape the madness. We can suspect
that Elmer Gantry continues philandery and hypocrisy after
the book ends, but we can't be sure. Henry Fielding finally
gets Tom Jones and Sophie Western together, but we don't
know whether they live happily ever after.
Mark Twain wrote a sequel, Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer
among the Indians.
It was so bad that Twain never
published it, and Twain published some terrible stuff, like
The Curious Kingdom of Gondour.
Sequels seldom work, whether they're by the original
author or someone else (although The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn
is itself a sequel to The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer,
and The Further Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn
by Greg Matthews, published in
1983, is a fair tale).
More interesting than a Huck Finn sequel is the novel's
history. This is Banned Books Week,
and I doubt that
any novel has inspired more banning efforts than
Huckleberry Finn, usually on account of protests from black
citizens, concerned about the racist dialect and the image
of Jim as superstitious and naive.
But look at the adult white males in the book. Pap Finn is an abusive drunk. The Duke and the King are scoundrels. Col. Sherburn heroically stands off a mob -- after he shoots and kills an unarmed man.
As an adult white male, I suppose I should complain about how Huck Finn might warp young minds. But I've got more important matters to consider. Could Rhett and Scarlett really ever get together again?
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