[at-l] RE: The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

[kborski@yahoo.com (Karen Borski)]

"Practically everything ever written uses 
sources of some kind or other.  A completely imagined
work is a very rare thing indeed and I'm not certain
it even exists."

I completely agree with the concept that most literary
works and stories borrow from real events or
people...of course, they have to have some source. 
And what more obvious source for stories about humans
than...other humans?

However, my discussion was concerning specific
details, not ideas, that I believe were taken from the
true story too literally to have been coincidental and
too often not to have credited them from coming from
the true story.  There is a big difference between
general ideas and specific details.  Stories based on
widely known events are common and
acceptable...nothing wrong with that.  But it seems
disconcerting to see a popular, best-selling, wealthy
author acclaimed for having a vivid imagination and
inventive mind for story-telling using specific
details found in a single story documented only in one
conveniently tidy, out-of-the-way, but excellent book.
 The general idea in Tom Gordon is that of a child
being lost in the wilderness, battling emotional
demons and fears.  The details I thought were
"borrowed" included similar dream sequences, specific
events and hallucinations being similar, too similar
to seem accidental.  A preface or note in the book
saying, "Based on the real events documented in Lost
on a Mountain in Maine" might have been more
appropriate if he really did borrow the facts.   I'm
not at all claiming that the book is plagarism, but I
was pretty shocked to see so many similarities with no
mention of credit or source.

Several people have suggested writing Stephen King to
ask him about the book's origins.  Perhaps, it is all
a very miraculous coincidence or maybe he did have a
behind the scenes "deal" of some sort with the author
of the true story to use his experiences in the novel.
 Perhaps it was even an accident: King maybe read the
true book years ago and inadvertantly borrowed from
memory, not remembering the source.  I guess being an
AT fanatic and a book lover, I couldn't help but be at
first impressed with King's ability to so accurately
portray what it would be like to be a lost child in
the woods, and then very suspicious that he actually
had the mental creativity and smarts to portray a lost
child in the woods after reading the true story of Don
Fendler (BTW, thanks for the info on title and
author).  

I was suspicious, still am, expected that someone else
might be and wanted to be validated a bit just so that
I could say, "Ha!  Stephen King didn't really just
know what it would be like to be lost near the AT
after all!"  The book just doesn't match in quality to
his other books that I have read.  It is a really good
read and very realistic and truly not a book to make
you more scared or freaked out in the woods.  It's a
nice psychological examination of how a person can
build fear into some huge hulking monster thing that
does not exist anywhere outside of the mind, except
maybe in scattered pieces.  

Nocona



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