Every story would be another story, and unrecognizable as art, if it took up its characters and plot and happened somewhere else. Imagine Swann’s Way laid in London, or The Magic Mountain in Spain, or Green Mansions in the Black Forest. The very notion of moving a novel brings ruder havoc to the mind and affections than would a century’s alteration in its time.
From Eudora Welty, “Place in Fiction” in Richard Ford and Michael Kreyling, eds., Eudora Welty: Stories, Essays, and Memoir (1998).
2 comments:
Interesting concept.
Guess you could say the same about moving a land-based locale to a ship...
This is something on my TBR list, as well as One Writer's Beginnings.
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