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- <text id=91TT1278>
- <title>
- June 10, 1991: Tomorrow Comes At Last
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- June 10, 1991 Evil
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- PEOPLE, Page 78
- Tomorrow Comes At Last
- </hdr><body>
- <p>By SOPHFRONIA SCOTT/Reported by Wendy Cole
- </p>
- <p> We last saw her, weary and downtrodden, on page 1037,
- declaring "Tomorrow, I'll think of some way to get him back.
- After all, tomorrow is another day." Now tomorrow has finally
- come for Scarlett O'Hara, the feisty heroine of Margaret
- Mitchell's Gone With the Wind. And it couldn't be soon enough
- for the millions of fans who have been musing for 55 years on
- what she did after Rhett Butler told her he didn't "give a
- damn."
- </p>
- <p> Four years in the making and published a year later than
- expected, Scarlett by Alexandra Ripley will finally be out in
- September. The novel picks up where GWTW left off, or so one can
- assume. Ripley isn't allowed to talk about it. "I'm terrible at
- keeping secrets," she says, "but I gave my word to the Mitchell
- estate lawyers, and they'd rip my tongue out with hot pincers
- if I talked." The secrecy also meant security precautions for
- Ripley, 57. She did all her writing in longhand ("I am not
- machine compatible," she says). But in order to prevent leaks,
- she couldn't use her usual typists for Scarlett. Instead her two
- daughters had to type and retype the entire work. "They will
- never let me forget it," quipped the author, who lives near
- Richmond.
- </p>
- <p> Though thrilled at having been the one chosen to pen the
- sequel ("I was so terrified some Yankee was going to do it," she
- says), Ripley does feel the awesome burden of satisfying GWTW
- fans. The author of several best-selling historical novels says
- she reread Mitchell's work four times and copied out more than
- 300 pages of the original prose to get a feel for its style.
- "As a writer she broke every rule, using different tenses in
- the same paragraph and mixing points of view," Ripley points
- out. "I had to train myself to do the same." She brushes off
- published rumors that the book's delay was due to a poor
- manuscript. "For people who love Gone With the Wind, this will
- be more of the same thing. It really is a very good read." But
- it has to be. Practically the whole world awaits it.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
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