:: day three - exclusive interview! ::

we have a guest speaker with us today: sir walter scott! aruguably the most popular and most influential writer of the 19th century, he is the author of bestsellers like old mortality and the creator of beloved characters such as madge wildfire, dugald dalgetty, and evan dhu maccombich.

thank you for coming out here, and answering some questions for us.

walter scott: my pleasure.

dj: yesterday I covered five of your best-known novels, but I considered them through a 21st-century lens -- the books which still have name recognition or a specific impact on our society today. what would you consider your best-known work?

ws: honestly, probably waverley will win out every time. being my first, some would say my best, and definitely the one that became my trademark, it was my best-known novel... in my time. for you, I would have to say ivanhoe has beaten waverley in the societal impact category.

dj: very true. ivanhoe has a more romantic appeal, I think, because it deals with knights and fair ladies, while waverley... well, you have to wade through a little more history, and most people don't know the royal history of great britain. which is sad, because I love evan dhu. but everyone is familiar with the crusaders, more or less.

ws: ivanhoe is much more adaptable to the screen, as well. there have been quite a few movie renditions of it -- in fact, isn't there an ivanhoe due to come out sometime in 2014?

dj: yes. and it's starring neil jackson who might be playing sir percy in the next scarlet pimpernel movie!!!!
....
ahem. sorry, I get sidetracked easily. next question.

which character was the most fun to create? wamba the jester -- isabella wardour -- evan dhu?

ws: yyyyyyyyeah. no. 
oh, that's hard to say. I don't think I can pin it down to one specifically. as far as categories go, some were enjoyable because of the dialogue, like ralph mareschal-wells [the black dwarf]; others I enjoyed for their complexity. it's like a puzzle, to attempt to reveal a character to the reader without completely exposing their true identity in the story, and I was always trying to do it better. like with the catherine/henry seyton cross-over [the abbot] or the seemingly multiple characters, all played by saladin, in the talisman. I couldn't stop thinking of new ways to disguise and reveal characters; to me, those were the most fun to write.

dj: does that mean the plodding, predictable ones were less entertaining?

ws: less entertaining, perhaps. but they were still mine, and there's something comforting in a predictable character once in a while.

dj: of course, though why you have to kill all the entertaining ones, like evan dhu, is beyond me. why not take any one of the bland lady-loves?

ws: I worked really hard on them, thank you very much! but that was the style of the time, and I didn't stick to stereotypes for every story, either.

dj: no, I guess they weren't all isabel veres or rose bradwardines or edith plantagenets. 

ws: are you picking on those girls? they each showed remarkable pluck in their respective stories. besides, I had catherine seyton, the lady augusta, di vernon, flora mac-ivor... well, okay, maybe flora's a little stereotypical. but the countess brenhilda, for crying out loud? every single one of them was a novel character!

dj: they were novel only because that's what you were writing. but you had me by augusta. spies; girls masquerading as boys; even a female crusader; all right. I'll hand it to you: your girls aren't all pale, beautiful, timid, and sweet. ...just most of them.

ws: do you have another question for me to answer, or are we going to sit here arguing about the stereotypical effeminacy of my female characters -- who are female, after all, and only did what was expected of them?

dj: fine, if you're going to get all huffy about it. (of course, you could always answer my question about why you had to kill off evan dhu.) which character do you identify with the most?

ws: you know, probably edward waverley. he's "warm in his feelings, wild and romantic in his ideas and in his taste of reading, with a strong disposition towards poetry." I actually based edward somewhat on myself; although I put a little of me in every hero, I think.

dj: the real question might be, but is there a little of every hero in you. ...what about in villains? did you base them exclusively off yourself? 

ws: har, har, no. although, clement cleveland [the pirate] reminds me of a darker, more mature, worldly-wise edward waverley, perhaps disillusioned with romance but still romantic at heart. obviously he has a baser beginning and a much more sinister past, but in clement's better moments the idealism of his character resembles that of edward, I think -- though not so much me.

dj: do you have any characters who were perhaps based off one another? like some of the ladies, maybe, who were exactly the same, but had different colored dresses...

ws: I can't quite hear you, and I don't think I want to. enough with the rising of your feministic hackles already. 

dj: some of my favorite characters from your books are actually minor ones -- like evan dhu -- whose part is minimal or whose character isn't extremely developed. were there any you ever wanted to focus more on, but the book's length or subject kept you from doing that?...other than the ladies, of course. you seem to prefer your women flat.

ws: will you get off it? good grief. ...well, I actually prefer leaving the historical details to the reader, letting them go to history themselves to find out what happened to james oig, or whoever they happen to be curious about. if the character isn't historical? it's a little sad, maybe, to think of a great story that I just can't tell, but usually I'm so focused on the main plot that I don't even think of it. I enjoyed tying the abbot and the monastery together, though, since they're at the same time in history; and people seemed to like that.

dj: I loved it, because it was like meeting old friends over again! the pale, limpid mary avenel might have actually improved with acquaintance...

ws: you just don't know when to stop, do you??

dj: mmm, actually, I'm thinking now is a good time.
thank you so much, sir walter, for joining us today and sharing your time and thoughts. it was quite enjoyable.

ws: I certainly enjoyed myself. ....mostly. except for the digs about my carefully crafted female char--

dj: ahem, and do come back tomorrow for ISWSW, day four: the poetry!