I always thought “War and Peace” should have been subtitled “Book One of Tolstoy’s Russian History Trilogy.” And then he could have big volumes on “The Three Emperors’ League” or “The Decembrists,” or whatever.
“Brothers Karamazov” really could have a good sequel, maybe with some of it set in America.
Less highbrow, Disney’s “Song of the South” could be reclaimed with a sequel about Uncle Remus leading a slave rebellion, maybe telling the little geeky kid what those animal stories REALLY meant.
Sunday Night, Monday Morning (sequel to Saturday Night, Sunday Morning) - Alan Sillitoe
Show Me the Money! (sequel to Money) - Martin Amis
The Wee Dawn Hours of the Morning’s Children (sequel to Midnight’s Children) - Salman Rushdie
I’m Sorry. No, Really! I Take It All Back. I am a Sinner, Please Forgive Me! Pretty Please? Can’t You Give a Poor Heretic a Break? Please, Please, Mr. Ayatollah? - Salman Rushdie’s sequel to the Satanic Verses
Ahab Rides Again: This Time It’s Personal: Moby Dick’s Revenge - Herman Melville
Out of the Heart of Darkness: the Return Home - Joseph Conrad
Still Spankin’ the Monkey - Philip Roth’s sequel to Portnoy’s Complaint
Rabbit From Beyond the Grave - somehow John Updike found a way to issue yet another installment in the series!
The Invisible Man Files a Class A Affirmative Action Lawsuit for Discrimination Against People of Non-Visibile Color - Ralph Ellison updates his classic for modern times
The Native Son’s Son: The Mike Tyson Story - Richard Wright on the Bigger Thomas of today
Bigger Sound, More Raging Fury - William Faulkner returns with more kick ass than ever before!
The Quiet American Gets Loud and Boisterous After a Few Beers Inside Him - Graham Greene
The Ugly American Gets Plastic Surgery - (err, whoever wrote that book)
(it should be pointed out that perhaps the greatest American novel, Huckleberry Finn, was a sequel to Tom Sawyer. And I liked Alice Through the Looking Glass Again)
Yeah, huck finn is a sequel, in that it sucks. What was all that crap at the end about putting snakes and shit in Jims cabin? He should have left Tom out of the second book. It was going along nicely until that point.
How about:
Walden goes to summer camp.
Idiot and Idioter.
The most important literary work in Western culture, the New Testament, is a sequel. It doesn’t have the body count of the blood & gore Old Testament - no scenes of Jehovah slaughtering 10,000 infidels with the jawbone of an ass - but it’s got more of a “message” to it that I like, all that peace and brotherly love stuff is good for the kids. So I think God Pt. II is better in some ways than the first installment of the series. I mean, have you tried slogging your way through the Book of Deuteronomy?! Sheesh! That was really the low point of the Biblical franchise, IMAO.
Actually, Dickens indirectly invented the “Hollywood Ending” with Great Expectations. His publishers told him that the original ending he’d written was too much of a downer, so he went back and rewrote the final chapter with a happy ending. I think most editions these days give you the option of both endings.