I’ve loved the Little Prince since my Dad read it to me as a child. It was standout because Dad never read books to us. That was always Mom. I would encounter it again when my sixth grade student teacher, who I had a hopeless crush on, told me it was her favorite book. The books would follow me into my adulthood in profound and personal ways.
When I was 26 I first had the idea of writing a sequel to the Little Prince. However, my professional and entrepreneurial ambitions left if on the back burner. Recently, I picked it back up and have resolved to finish what I had started.
The more time I have invested in the project, the more I realize what a significant undertaking I am making. Saint-Exupéry was a perfectionist and a fanatical editor. There is a reason why so many of the lines of the novel effortlessly impress themselves into our memories. It is one of the most widely printed books of all time, with 200+ million copies in 100+ languages.
In my research of the Little Prince, I read one of the sequels, written by his niece, Ysatis De Saint-Simon. She has the Little Prince revisit characters in the first novel and lecture them on Universal Love while aggressively pushing a nuclear disarmament narrative. It is charming but clumsy and a lesson in things to avoid when writing a sequel.
The challenge is always to capture some magic and familiarity of the original, while avoiding creating something purely derivative. This is rarely achieved – the most common exceptions because the sequel was actually just a subset of a larger epic (LOTR, Foundation, etc.)
I drew some inspiration from evolution of Roald Dahl’s autobiographies, Boy and Going Solo. The first covers his childhood up to early adolescence. The second covers his time in the RAF. While they share in style and charm, the latter demands a little more from the reader as he touches are more intense, and nuanced topics. We as readers must mature with the author. I believe the same will be required for readers of this.
There are two lenses that the Little Prince was developed around. The first was topical issues of the time. Saint-Exupéry wrote the little Prince while WWII raged on. Many themes and characters, while timeless, take on a special focus when seen through this lens. Now in the 21st century, there is an opportunity to sharpen focus on contemporary issues. I can ask myself what would the character archetypes be if Saint-Exupéry was alive today. It is a very different world we find ourselves, despite humans remaining all too human.
The second theme is most difficult – that is one of introspection. There are copious interpretations of how Little Prince was seeded on experience from Saint-Exupéry’s own life and existential battles. He wrote it during one of the most trying periods of his life. Undoubtedly, my story will contain its own reflections, both conscious and unconscious. As Stephen King advices the writer:
“…every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why [your desk] isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support-system for art. It’s the other way around.”
My story takes place on the Moon. It is there, an astronaut (the narrator), encounters the Little Prince. It is there the Little Prince retreated to escape a terrible grief. It is from there that the two peer back at Earth with a powerful telescope.
I expect to have my first draft finished by the end of the summer. I will post it here for feedback.
-T