A Tangent: Could the Setting Be the Problem?

Or, could it at least betray the deeper reasons for recent authorial discontent? I'd like to follow up on my "the series needs a temporary change of venue" assertion last C-Pad with this little addendum, prefaced with three pivotal observations from fellow fans that helped lead me to this conclusion -

Eileen Carlan: "These issues raise again the matter of authorship: Is Braun still writing these books? If she is, obviously she has been struggling. That would be understandable for someone who has written 24 books on the same subject, 19 of them in the past 15 years. It isn't clear, however, why Braun would want to alter so extensively a setting that has worked so well for her in the past. These changes would be more understandable if they were the work of a ghostwriter who is preparing to take over the series. The new author would want to reshape Moose County according to his or her own vision of it and plans for its future."

Crystal Wood: "I haven't perceived Qwilleran as turning into a jerk, but he sure isn't as sharp as he used to be. Qwill is LJB's alter ego; whatever's going on in her own life is going to be reflected in her characterization to some extent, consciously or unconsciously. If there's a certain arrogance to his recent behavior, it may be due to her own frustration at not being able to perform up to her own previous standards. You gotta figure that the feedback she's getting from her publisher is as kissy as always, to keep her cranking out a book a year when she would probably rather be enjoying the Carolina coastline with Earl, but the fan letters she's getting are telling her something else."

Deb: "I also think that most recent Cat Who do not have the same feel, but I suppose towns do change. That is, in the first Cat Who stories in Pickax, after Qwill's big town experiences, the feel of small town was there. And so was the intimacy of the inhabitants of these residents. I think LJB may be reflecting some of the alienation in these small towns today in her last books."

I'd say that alienation is indeed precisely the force at work here - but on behalf of the author, though, rather than on that of Pickax's citizens. Look at the most recent books, and you'll find evidence that Braun has grown discontent with the Up North setting -

1. Starting with Lived High, Qwill's been fairly restless. He was back Down Below in that book, and subsequent books have taken place either completely or substantially in Lockmaster (Knew a Cardinal), the Potatoes (Moved a Mountain), Scotland (Wasn't There), and Breakfast Island. (And, to think of it, a good amount of the action in Went into the Closet took place in Florida, though we never saw any Florida scenes first-hand.) Braun actually had Qwill's stipulated five-year stay in Moose County expire during this period, freeing him to relocate if he found more agreeable (and, presumably, stimulating) digs. (And, as discussed elsewhere, Braun indeed seemed to be priming for that purpose the Potatoes of the very book in which the Klingenschoen will's terms were fulfilled, considering the extra care and investment put into establishing and fleshing out that community - a community which echoed her then-and-present Carolina mountain home instead of the Michigan locale from which she'd moved.)

2. Most of Qwill's reactions to the older supporting characters are of derision, frustration, or disdainful disinterest (see his encounters with Elizabeth, Derek, and Susan in Smelled a Rat) - emotions completely unwarranted, as Qwill is never met by anyone in Moose County nowadays with anything but total adoration, and most probably reflective of a general weariness, either on the part of the character or the author, toward the surroundings (in the vein of Crystal Wood's above comment). Contrast this to the seemingly forced, absolute contentment with and unilateral support of absolutely every aspect of everyday life Up North among Moose Countians - as opposed to, say, circa Played Post Office, when ornery griping about tourists or out-of-date town-hall flags was second-nature to pretty much everyone, the populace is now universally happy. But Qwill's dissatisfied restlessness, apparently baseless in terms of the story, still lingers - because Braun herself is still dissatisfied and restless, as recent would-be remedies haven't done the job.

3. On the other hand, the recently-added cast members have proved shockingly disposable, not only in terms of character substance but of longevity - Pender Wilmot and Thornton Haggis have come and seemingly gone with little if any explanation, and others like Rollo McBee have seemed to have simply faded into the background after their moments in the sun in their introductory books. The sheer numbers in which characters are introduced and done away with signals some discontent on Braun's part - that she's experimenting with ways to correct something with which she's dissatisfied but hasn't yet stumbled upon a satisfactory solution.

The problem with the tinkering (on top of the fact that it's plain not doing its intended job) is that it's "fixing" something that, in a sense, wasn't broken to begin with. As Eileen stated, provided this whole scenario is true, it is absolutely understandable for an author to run low on material and/or get exhausted/burned out/bored after exploring and expounding on the same subject for almost twenty books and fifteen years. But nothing was horribly wrong with the Moose County setting before - this one particular author, after a long, long period of familiarity with it, has just found it squeezed dry of ideas for her. It's still working - it's just not still working for Braun's needs, at least not in its present form. But just because something does not work now does and should not negate all the times it worked before - Picasso, say, didn't paint over all his Blue Period canvases when he moved on to his Rose Period, after all. And that's the quagmire with twisting around the setting for a long-running series of books out of sheer restlessness, even if the artist truly believes it to be in her best creative interest - the changes do affect (negatively, in this case) the established characters and places the older books so endeared to us. Recent stories reflect priorities far removed from those of the classic Moose County ones, and the gradual changes in the past several books to make the place better suited to Braun's present storytelling needs are leading the locale we knew and loved so dearly to a slow but sure and, in my opinion, very imminent death.

In a way, the country setting might need to be set aside to be saved. I love Moose County (the old Moose County), too, but that's only one more reason to send Qwill on a sabbatical, as all this experimentation is just a way of dancing around the present potential problem that the Up North setting just isn't working for Braun anymore. I'm not sure what the roadblocks are to this whole farrago being addressed - whether Braun's just loathe to make a definite break with Moose County, be it permanently or just for one book, or if Putnam, lax as its editorial control might be, might not let Braun move the series away from the Moose County locale even for one volume due to its popularity among fans and fear of falling sales if it's abandoned. Given the choice, I wouldn't want to leave Moose County either (at least not permanently - a change of scenery might still be refreshing), but under the current circumstances, it might be the only road to recovery.

Note: I haven't covered the ghost writer scenario discussed by Eileen Carlan above and by some of my recent reviews. The ramifications in that case, though, are pretty much the same - if the author finds that she (or he) needs to so extensively alter the existing setting to beyond the point of recognition in order to spin the stories, she/he needs to pick up shop and move to another locale entirely.

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