Talk:The Woods Are Dark

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Differences between versions of the novel.

The article states that the 2008 Cemetery Dance edition includes 50 pages of material which was cut from the earlier Warner Books edition. This is true, but the actual situation is more complicated than this: the Cemetery Dance edition also *omits* a few dozen pages of material which was included in the much earlier British (Headline) edition of the novel. That is, both the Cemetery Dance and Headline editions include substantial passages not found in the other. These two passages are completely different from each other: the two are in effect completely different sub-plots which were found in one edition but not the other, thus creating two different versions of the novel, neither an entire subset of the other.

The added material in the Cemetery Dance edition was also published several years ago in a limited-edition chapbook which was issued together with limited editions of "A Writer's Tale".

I have never seen the Warner Books edition, so I don't know if it includes this material added to the Headline edition. If it does not, then presumably it would be substantially shorter than either the Cemetery Dance or Headline editions.

The extra material in both the Headline and Cemetery Dance editions is not continuous, but takes the form of several chapters interspersed between the other chapters common to both editions, and representing separate narrative strands that alternate several times.

What is uncertain is the origin of the material added to the Headline edition. Because it is not included in the Cemetery Dance edition, presumably it was not in the novel as originally written. Did Laymon write this material later to substitute for the material the Warner Books editors took out - or could it have even been written by the editors?

For a moment I was going to alter the article to reflect the differences I've just described (which can be easily seen by comparing the Cemetery Dance and Headline editions), but I decided not to when I realized I didn't know quite enough about the whole situation to do so properly - especially what material is included in the Warner Books edition or not. (I own both the other editions, but not the Warner Books edition.) Instead, I note my observations here, and maybe someone who knows the definitive story behind this could one day amend the article accordingly. I may do so myself one day if I can find out exactly what the Warner Books version includes and doesn't include.

If anyone knows about this, I would be very interested to learn of it, and it would be a good addition to make to this article.

Thanks. M.J.E. (talk) 18:07, 19 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]