Page to Screen Pontifications

Page to Screen Pontifications

Within the past month we have seen released two movie adaptations of popular books; Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card and Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins. In the near future we have the second installment of The Hobbit (which I am still trying to decide how I feel on it being extended into three books). Likely this summer will have a bevy of superhero films and of course there is much stir over John’s Green’s The Fault in our Stars and I am constantly hearing rumors of other literary classics that are under consideration for screen adaptation.  With Hollywood seeming to be looking to the print form for their inspiration I have found that I have mixed feelings about this trend. On one hand it can be fun and interesting to see how various screen writers directors approach a novel to translate it onto film. Yet, translating is exactly what they do and so much can be lost in the translation. Some actors are able to bring surprising new aspects to the characters they portray. But only rarely can we witness an actor’s role grown in the same manner that can be done in a book.

The most recent example for me of this see-saw of good and bad comes from Ender’s Game, a book I have long held in high esteem and will gladly reread when the opportunity arises. After seeing the movie, I was a bit shocked. I spent well over an hour discussing all the things, minor and major that had been changed, toned down, forgotten or were plain wrong. Yet, as a friend pointed out to me, the major moral and ethical questions that Ender’s Game addresses have been lifted out and emphasized.

To me this begs some questions regarding film adaptations, most especially how true does the adaptation need to stay to the original text in order for it to be considered successful and successful in whose eyes?

I will admit that one result of this trend that I have noticed is that the concepts and ideas, however watered down, truncated, simplified, edited, etc. are reaching a far greater number of people. In the past year I have encountered numerous individuals wanting copies of Ender’s Game, Great Gatsby, Atlas Shrugged, Sherlock Holmes, and The Hobbit to name a few. A handful has even confided in me that they want to read the books prior to seeing the movie! While the adaptation may be a far cry from the eminence of the book, perhaps lovers of the written story should be happy that the movies are driving people to the print versions.

 

 

National Book Awards 2013

National Book Awards 2013

It’s that time of year again. No, not turkey, or shopping, or nasty weather, I am referring to the 63 National Book Awards, which were announced on November 20^th. For those enquiring minds, this award was established in 1950 by the National Book Foundation as a literary prize for American authors. There are four categories, Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Young People’s Literature, and a total of twenty Judges. The 20 judge panel read and reread a list of 150-500 books, continually narrowing the list of potential winners. To be considered for the National Book Awards, the book must be written by an American citizen, published by and American publisher, and  released between December 1 of the previous year and November 30 of the current year.

Anyway, stop by the library and check this year’s winners or peruse past winners.

The Good Lord Bird  by James McBride
Henry Shackleford is a young slave living in the Kansas Territory in 1857, when the region is a battleground between anti- and pro-slavery forces. When John Brown, the legendary abolitionist, arrives in the area, an argument between Brown and Henry’s master quickly turns violent. Henry is forced to leave town—with Brown, who believes he’s a girl.

The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America by George Packer
A riveting examination of a nation in crisis, from one of the finest political journalists of our generation American democracy is beset by a sense of crisis. Seismic shifts during a single generation have created a country of winners and losers, allowing unprecedented freedom while rending the social contract, driving the political system to the verge of breakdown, and setting citizens adrift to find new paths forward.

Incarnadine: Poems by Mary Szybist
Mary Szybist’s richly imagined encounters offer intimate spaces and staging for experiences that are exploratory and sometimes explosive. Through the lens of an iconic moment, the Annunciation of an unsettling angel to a bodily young woman, Szybist describes the confusion and even terror of moments in which our longing for the spiritual may also be a longing for what is most fundamentally alien to us. In a world where we are so often asked to choose sides, to believe or not believe, to embrace or reject, Incarnadine offers lyrical and brilliantly inventive alternatives.

The Thing About Luck  by Cynthia Kadohata,
Summer knows that kouun means “good luck” in Japanese, and this year her family has none of it. Just when she thinks nothing else can possibly go wrong, an emergency whisks her parents away to Japan—right before harvest season. Summer and her little brother, Jaz, are left in the care of their grandparents, who come out of retirement in order to harvest wheat and help pay the bills.

For more information on the National Book Award, including a complete list of nominees in 2013 and previous years' winners, check out http://nationalbook.org/

Adventure Novels!

Critic Don D'Ammassa, in the Introduction to the Encyclopedia of Adventure Fiction defines the genre as:  ...An adventure is an event or series of events that happens outside the course of the protagonist's ordinary life, usually accompanied by danger, often by physical action. Adventure stories almost always move quickly, and the pace of the plot is at least as important as characterization, setting and other elements of a creative work.

 November 13th was the birthday of Robert Louis Stevenson, born in Edinburgh, Scotland (1850). He began to suffer from a lung disease at a very early age. He wanted to live a life of adventure but his poor health forced him to move to France. One night, he was passing by a house and fell instantly in love with a woman he saw. He followed her to San Francisco and married her.  They traveled constantly looking for a healthier climate.  They finally settled on the Pacific island of Samoa.

In the summer of 1881, Stevenson painted a map of an imaginary island for his stepson, and it gave him an idea for Treasure Island (1883). He finished it in a few weeks.  A few years later, he wrote the novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) in a single week. He also wrote Kidnapped in 1866.

Stevenson's peers saw him as one of the greatest writers of his generation. And he influenced others such as Ernest Hemingway, Vladimir Nabokov, Jorge Luis Borges and G. K. Chesterton.

Classics

Homer--The Odyssey (End of 8th century B.C.)
Daniel Defoe--Robinson Crusoe (1719)
Johann David Wyss--Swiss Family Robinson (1812)
Alexandre Dumas--Three Musketeers (1844), Count of Monte Cristo (1845)
Herman Melville--Moby Dick (1851)
Jules Verne--Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869)
Rudyard Kipling--Captains Courageous (1897)
Joseph Conrad--Heart of Darkness (1899)
J. M. Barrie--Peter Pan (1902)
Jack London--Call of the Wild (1903), Sea-Wolf (1904), White Fang (1906)
Arthur Conan Doyle--The Lost World (1912)
Edgar Rice Burroughs--Tarzan of the Apes (1914)
J. R. R. Tolkien--The Hobbit (1936), The Lord of the Rings (1954-55)
William Golding--Lord of the Flies (1954)

Contemporary

Dale Brown--Act of War, Dreamland, Flight of the Old Dog
Dan Brown--Angels and Demons, The DaVinci Code
Lee Child--Jack Reacher novels (Killing Floor)
Michael Crichton--Congo, Jurassic Park, The Lost World
Clive Cussler--The Chase, Serpent, Spartan Gold (anything by him)
Nelson DeMille--Cathedral, Plum Island, The Quest
Jack Du Brul--Havoc, The Medusa Stone, Vulcan's Forge
Robert Ludlum--Jason Bourne novels (The Bourne Identity) 
George R.R. Martin--Song of Ice and Fire series (A Game of Thrones)
Gary Paulsen--Hatchet, The River, The Crossing
David Poyer--Fire on the Waters, The Med, The Whiteness of the Whale
Daniel Silva--Gabriel Allon series (Kill Artist)
Brad Taylor--Pike Logan series (One Rough Man)
Brad Thor--Scot Harvath series (Lions of Lucerne)
Peter Tonkin--Richard Mariner series (The Coffin Ship)

There are so many more!  What are some of your favorites?  Let me know what you liked as a child and what you enjoy now?

I loved White Fang and Lord of the Rings!


"If you don't like Stevenson, there must be something wrong with you."
Jorge Luis Borges

The Nazi and the Psychiatrist

I once met a fellow over at Bethany Village who told me an interesting story. Being a WWII veteran, he said that one of his more memorable assignments after the war was as a prison guard at Nuremberg, where many high-level Nazis--including Reichsmarshall Hermann Göring, Hitler's second-in-command--were being held for trial. Based on all he'd heard about these criminals, he half-expected some of them to have horns on their heads, and he was quite taken aback by how normal they seemed and how friendly some of them were. He was told these men were monsters, yet to him they seemed anything but, and he had a difficult time reconciling such normal-acting people with the horrific acts they stood accused of committing. Of course, looks, and more importantly, behavior, can be deceiving, and sociopaths can be quite the charmers when they need to be.

I was reminded of this recently when I read a fascinating book by Jack El-Hai, The Nazi and the Psychiatrist: Hermann Göring, Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, and A Fatal Meeting of Minds at the End of WWII. Dr. Kelley, an officer in the U.S. Army, was assigned to assess and supervise the mental and emotional fitness of the Nazi detainees before and during the first Nuremberg Trial in 1946. Kelley was eager to find out if the Nazi leaders shared a flaw in their psyches that made them overly willing to commit evil acts, and Göring in particular became the focus of his study. However, by the time Kelley finished his duties at Nuremberg, he'd come to the conclusion that there was no such Nazi "germ" that had infected these men. Rather, he believed that society was filled with men like Göring, "unburdened by conscience and driven by narcissism," men who "spent their days 'behind big desks deciding big affairs as businessmen, politicians, and racketeers. . . .'" Placed in the right circumstances and given the proper authority, these men had the potential to wreak havoc just as the Nazis had. Indeed, Kelley went as far as to warn, ". . . I am quite certain that there are people even in America who would willingly climb over the corpses of half of the American public if they could gain control of the other half. . . ."

Kelley once said that "the professional life of a psychiatrist was about 15 years--after that he either went crazy, or committed suicide." Sadly, his words were only too prophetic, for he killed himself in 1958 by swallowing, of all things, potassium cyanide. He was a demanding, driven, and complex man, a professional success but also a man who seemed incapable of simply being happy.

The Nazi and the Psychiatrist is a superb addition to the canon of WWII and Holocaust literature. I highly recommend it.  

November's Get In the Queue

Here are a few highlights from this month's In the Queue.

Where the Moon Isn't: A Novel by Nathan Filer

Matthew Homes and his older brother snuck out in the middle of the night. Only Matthew came home safely. Ten years later, Matthew tells us, he has found a way to bring his brother back... This debut novel begins as the story of a lost boy and turns into a story of a brave man, who yearns to learn what happened the night his brother disappeared. This brilliant debut novel shows us that strength is rooted in resilience and love. 

 Stella Bain by Anita Shreve

 An epic novel, set against the backdrop of World War I. It is a tragic, yet hopeful story of love, loss and rebuilding. This beautiful story has a hint of Downton Abbey and the writing is exquisite. 

 

Five Days In November by Clint Hill

This story took Clint Hill fifty years to tell. It is a work of personal and historical scope. Besides the unbearable grief of a nation and the monumental consequences of the event, the death of JFK was a personal blow to a man sworn to protect the first family. As the shots rang out in Dallas he knew nothing would ever be the same.

 

 

Tell the Wolves I'm Home

The selection for the November meeting of Uncorked was Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt. The story is a beautifully written, coming-of-age novel that deals with family relations, AIDS in the 1980s, and love of all varieties. Like the majority of our books for Uncorked, this is a debut novel. Unlike most debuts, this book is neither tedious nor pretentious.

I think the beauty of Brunt’s writing is in her ability to set the stage. I always knew where I was and what my surroundings were like. The characters were very well developed in terms of personality, but I had a harder time picturing them than I did the woods, the subway, or the apartment of a loved one. Brunt provided general descriptions of the characters physical appearance, but the let reader know the character through actions, thoughts, and emotions rather than just explaining who the person was. We were privy to silent thoughts and actions through the lens of the protagonist, June Elbus.

The story begins with two sisters having their portrait painted by their beloved, dying uncle. The uncle, Finn, is dying of AIDS in 1986. He requests the opportunity to paint the portrait over the course of several Sundays. June, who harbors a secret crush on her uncle, is delighted to spend the time with him, while her sister, Greta, is less than thrilled. Finn meets his untimely demise when the portrait is complete, but this is only the beginning. Finn’s death unravels family secrets of jealousy and desperation, as well as the fact that he was a renowned artist. The portrait becomes a communication tool between the sisters as they struggle to find themselves and renew the relationship they once had.

The book, like most coming-of-age stories, doesn’t offer a huge plot twist. The book is quiet and methodical. It offers the troubles of a girl growing up in the suburbs of New York, and how she comes to realize her place in the world and her family—not to mention, the consequences of her actions. What I loved was the pace of the novel and the questions that it posed—What is right or wrong in love? Who ultimately gets hurt when we let jealousy drive our actions? I also enjoyed June. She was a different sort of protagonist. Not always likeable, but excusably immature at times. Brunt created a character that we lived through but could see around when situations were above June’s understanding or experience.  

Overall, I would highly recommend the book to anyone seeking a good read. Tell the Wolves I’m Home is also the winner of an ALEX Award. The ALEX Award is awarded yearly to ten books written for adults that have special appeal to young adults, ages 12-18. A good read for teens and adults alike—a good book to share and discuss.