Mo' Meta Blues

Oh wait - Questlove beat me to that title.

Well, since Chris has taken a turn down Meta street, I'll go for a spin in that 'hood.

When is a text final?  What exactly are revisions, updated editions, remixes, director's cuts - the same book/movie/song or a different thing altogether?  Does one depend on the other?  Is Rohmer revising, rewriting or re-thinking Separation or just using it as a basis to write a "new" book really, really fast?

I will have to finish Separation Two to think about this some more - or maybe I have already finished it?

But does a writer, as the creator and owner of a text, have a right to rethink it, to change it?  It's his/her book - why can't they say "Oh wait - I wish Hermione had ended up with Harry"  and rewrite it to make that so.  Is that a betrayal of whatever the audience had invested in the story?  Do audiences have rights?

Perhaps going into these areas of literary theory to consider what Rohmer was up to is a pointless exercise.  In fact, I know it is. But what else can you make of a book with a different title, being sold as such, is in fact mostly the same book all over again, with additions.  (see Brian's handy guide a couple of posts back).

I don't think this would matter to me so much if it was simply a revised edition; something about giving it a different title and then doing so little to make it different I find annoying.

PS: The simple answer is "Greedo did not shoot first because I say he didn't.  My experience taught me that and I will not change that self-evident fact just because some guy at ILM proved to George it could be that way if he wanted it to".