briefly
notes from conversation.
it seems that literature is sacrosanct, inviolable. intellectual property rights intervene. one may no more appropriate & improve on D. H. Lawrence's hideous tract, Sons & Lovers, than on Mikhail Bulgakov's near-flawless Master & Margarita. one may certainly not truncate great works of literature without fielding great outcry.
"wherefore this anxiety?" I am asked. some works would gain enormously from revision. opening works to improvement & peer-editing does not require that the original work is effaced entirely. one can certainly, for instance, imagine "Faulkner's Absalom! Absalom!, Marquez-Redux" or somesuch. it is contended, too, that Dostoyevsky's The Idiot suffers from a lamentable shortfall: an imperfect execution of a perfect novel-idea. if Dostoyevsky remains inviolate, the vision will never be achieved.
the contention continues: perhaps someone will be born who sees & executes Dostoyevsky's vision perfectly. he or she should be allowed to. or indeed, perhaps there will be many who try, and among the numerous ensuing revisions, not all will be improvements. perhaps whether or not they are improvements becomes a matter of opinion. no one said these future editions must be regarded as equal -- either to each other, or to the work they derive from.
ah, I say; we face a looming Ship of Theseus.
indeed, it is agreed. with slow acts of revision, spread out over a suitably long period of time, one might incrementally revise Faulkner into Cervantes.
anyway -- gnawing panic at the creeping thesis deadline, but I made cinnamon & chocolate-chip banana bread & that has a strangely remedial effect. though whether this resides in the making or the eating is, as yet, unclear.