Imagining the infinite possibilities for a character can be better than getting a sequel
One of my favorite things about reading a highly satisfying novel is reaching the final page and experiencing that bittersweet sensation of the story ending, while also having the distinct feeling that somehow the lives of the characters will continue beyond the pages of the book.
Think how incredible it is that someone made you not only believe in the existence of entirely fictional creations, but you came to care about what happens to them in the future they do not have because, again, these people are entirely made up.
But sometimes we get the chance to check in with these characters years later because a writer decides it’s time for a sequel. Currently, this is the case with the indelible character of Tracy Flick in the newly released “Tracy Flick Can’t Win.”
The character was first brought to life by Tom Perrotta in 1998’s “Election.”
Things are complicated when it comes to Tracy Flick because our image of her is inextricably tied with Reese Witherspoon’s portrayal in Alexander Payne’s film adaptation of the book. However, Perrotta’s creation is not the same as Payne’s interpretation.
The Tracy Flick of both “Election” and “Tracy Flick Can’t Win” is much more sympathetic than the film version, primarily because the medium of fiction allows us access to her interior in a way the film cannot match.
I appreciated getting to check in with Tracy nearly a quarter-century after we first met, and I recommend “Tracy Flick Can’t Win” to anyone else with a fondness for the original book, the film or Perrotta’s other novels. And yet I can’t help but think that the literary sequel is, by design, almost destined to disappoint.
I should be clear about how I’m defining a sequel in this case, and that I think there is a distinction to be made between a “series” and “sequel.”
A series is a group of related books where volumes subsequent to the first one were part of the original design. George R.R. Martin’s “The Song of Ice and Fire” is a series. Elena Ferrante’s “Neapolitan Novels” are also a series.
Saying that “Tracy Flick Can’t Win” is disappointing is not a comment on the quality of Perrotta’s book. I could say the same about Richard Russo’s 2016 “Everybody’s Fool,” a follow-up to 1993’s “Nobody’s Fool,” or Elizabeth Strout’s “Olive Again” from 2019, which followed her Pulitzer Prize-winning “Olive Kitteridge” from 2008.
In each case I eagerly dove into the sequels, and even enjoyed them, but I can’t help but admit — to myself above all — they did not engender the same depth of connection as the originals. There are probably lots of reasons for this.
For one, the first installments of each of those books are among my all-time favorite reads. The authors set a very high bar that it would be difficult for anyone to clear a second time. Also, I am a different person than I was when I read the originals. The role of specific time, place and personal mindset in how one receives a book is often underrated and overlooked.
But I think the biggest reason for a certain sense of disappointment is that
putting down the specifics of a story in a sequel ends the pleasure of imagining the infinite possibilities for a character we experience at the end of a particularly involving story.
Perhaps there is simply more pleasure in believing that a fictional character is in the world living their lives than in seeing the specifics of what those lives have become, no matter how skillfully those specifics are rendered.
John Warner is the author of “Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.”