News reaches us from Argentina that author Alejandro Roemmers has written a "spiritual complement" to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's classic The Little Prince, complete with a happier ending.
Now while I admit that Saint-Exupery's ending isn't the cheeriest - "I shall look as if I were suffering. I shall look a little as if I were dying. It is like that. Do not come to see that. It is not worth the trouble..." – I think that curbing our tendencies to rework tragedy to make it more palatable would be wise.
The world would have been fine without Tate's The History of King Lear, in which Cordelia marries Edgar and Lear gets his throne back, or more recently the several re-takes on Gone With The Wind. It reminds me of Stephen King's crazed fan Annie in Misery, who forces the writer she has trapped to bring her favourite character back to life.
But it made me wonder which stories would suffer most from a tacked-on happy ending. Anna is saved from the train by Vronsky! It was all a big misunderstanding – Oedipus isn't really part of the family! Cathy and Heathcliff enjoy a long and happy marriage! Over to you …
