Of course Jack and Ennis belong to the world now.
This is so wise Paul. And, it's just a reality of creating art or writing literature. An artist must know that other artists, readers and viewers will use their art/ writing as springboards for their own ideas and interpretations... and sometimes even for their own works of different, autonomous art. In the world of modern literature this idea that the author has essentially no control over his or her creation once it has been exposed to an audience (any audience) is pretty common (Roland Barthes is the best example of a theorist who talks about this).
But, Annie's reaction of course is upsetting to read about, and it's been something I've been thinking about a bit all day. Most of you know that I'm an art historian by profession, so I have some strong feelings about this subject. On one level it's not hard to imagine her sense of protectiveness over her story. But, my feeling is that she should relax about it a bit. I really do think things like the phenomenon of fanfic should not be a surprise to her and should not be perceived as a threat (or something she needs to be defensive about).
Because adaptation and art and writing that borrows from other artists and writers have existed deep into cultural history. I can think of dozens examples of artists borrowing compositional elements from other artists and then incorporating those elements into new works of art. Sometimes the phenomenon is about a Renaissance artists copying a pose or a figure from ancient Greek art (so that there's a great deal of distance/ time between the source and the "copier"). Or, in the case of Impressionist artists there are numerous examples of artists who were friends who would exchange poses and compositions. So, in this case figures or compositions from one artist would be "quoted" in the work of another artist (and done deliberately as a part of active exchange between friends and/or rivals). Etc.
In writing, the best current popular example of a form of writing that truly is fanfic, but is taken quite seriously, is
Wicked. This is on my mind because I just saw the musical a couple weekends ago (and I read the book a while ago). Obviously the characters in
Wicked are directly lifted from L. Frank Baum's original
Wizard of Oz. And, the author of
Wicked, Gregory Maguire, makes no attempt to disguise this... he uses the name Oz, and he uses numerous other locations and characters (complete with their original names). Writing a story that's an extrapolation on the work of a previous author is hardly a new idea or a surprise.
Even when you think about the screenplay of BBM... which was not written by Proulx (obviously)... other authors made enormous adaptations based on Proulx's earlier story. They invented huge sections of the story that just simply don't exist in the original story, or that only exist in Proulx's story in the form of a single word or sentence. And, they also cut out certain details (motel scene, etc.) from Proulx's original form of the story. Clearly the screenplay of BBM exists in the category of "adapted screenplay"... which, even as a category acknowledges the widespread and culturally ingrained phenomenon of artistic exchange and adaptation.
Anyway, the whole topic of artistic exchange is pretty fascinating. And, when you really think about it, fanfic writers are simply part of a very old tradition/ process within creative culture.