I am so excited to say my book is now available for purchase! You can check it out on Amazon or barnesandnoble.com by searching my name and the book title Word Bath. If you’re looking for some light poetry, please give it a read. You can see more details on the menu of my blog here, check out the page labeled WORD BATH (easy peasy).
(featured image in this post is by Nick Fewings via Unsplash)
I listened to the Penguin Classics audiobook version of Far From the Maddening Crowd narrated by Olivia Vinall after sampling a few different narrators on iBooks. Narrators really make or break audiobooks. I highly recommend it. I did this a little backward and watched the 2015 version film version of this story before reading the book and enough time had passed that by the time I read the book I’d forgotten some major plot points. So, it all worked out.
Definitely forgot how cringy Boldwood is. YIKES. Bathsheba remains an amazingly complex and flawed heroine and I’m continually surprised how Hardy manages to write women during a time when they were largely presented in one of two tropes. Angel virgin or fallen woman. You’ll be frustrated and at the same time hoping she figures out what the hell she wants in life. If you prefer more perfect heroines, maybe read something else. You might be yelling at the book, but it’s never boring.
I dove back into my comfort zone this past month: English literature. As you may see from my Goodreads feed in the corner of this blog, I listened to the 2009 Blackstone Audio recording of Howard’s End by E.M. Forster narrated by Nadia May and available on iBooks. I sifted though a few samples before landing on her as my narrator of choice (narrators can make or break an audiobook). This, of course, was after I’d watched the 2017 BBC series based on the novel starring Hayley Atwell and Matthew Macfayden. However, before I decided to compare it with the 1992 feature length film version starring Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins.
I love watching adaptations. I love getting more of something I already love or seeing how ~maybe~ the movie could make it better *cough cough* The Horse Whisperer *cough *cough* or present it exactly the way I’d imagined and more! Books and their movie counterparts can be equally enjoyable, change my mind. I will say, I was a tad surprised that I found the 1992 adaptation lacking. I was bored stiff, and by amazing actors and performances. But I don’t think it was the running length. Obviously the 2017 miniseries had more time to explore the details of the novel – it was the 1992 versions’ screenplay.
The script followed the outline of the novel well enough, but it was devoid of any of those cinematic moments that truly make you feel for the characters you’re watching. And this is coming from a person who has watched the 2005 Pride & Prejudice FAR more than I ever have the beloved 90s miniseries. The film hit all the right plot points, but I wasn’t torn when Margaret was forced to choose between her sister and her husband upon accepting Mr. Wilcox’s proposal nor was I very worried when Helen suddenly broke contact for mysterious reasons. Those small moments that get us close and intimate with a character I think were lost in the film’s attempt to be a faithful adaptation to the text beat by beat.
I guess I just can’t say enough good things about Macfayden’s nuanced performance as Mr. Wilcox either. He’s an amazing actor to watch. You hate him one moment and love him the next, Hopkins seems far too detached to be likable even in the end when the audience is meant to come around to his character. All the characters seem more fully realized in the 2017 miniseries. Except Leonard Bast… I’m still trying to figure out what Joseph Quinn was doing looking mildly constipated the entire time.
So, here’s the order in which I consumed my media:
2017 BBC miniseries
1910 Novel
1992 Film
I recommend all for comparison, but the novel doesn’t exactly need my endorsement. It’s a classic.
(featured image is Hayley Atwell as Margaret Schlegel in the 2017 adaptation available on STARZ)
One of the hardest things for me to grasp is that writing, in my experience, is not seen as a viable talent or a gift which needs refining. You see it in the creative world and you see it in the professional/corporate world. Everywhere. And I’ve dabbled in just about all of it: technical writing, poetry, dialogue, most recently copywriting.
One of the saddest moments I had in my experience as a technical writer was spending many hours rewriting an online training manual. I took a lot of the language which was fairly conversational and translated it into more palatable verbiage for the reader and a person new to an unknown process. I left the job and came back a year later to find that my manual had been edited, by many, with no checks. Inconsistencies in phrasing and wording abounded and I just looked away. Anyone can do it, right?
For an example of good vs. bad technical writing, just think about every piece of furniture you’ve tried to assemble on your own. How difficult was it? Did the instructions help or hinder you? Technical writing is important. Not everyone can do it well or effectively. But if it’s not seen as a viable skill, anyone can do it, right? And that’s when the confusion begins.
The same goes for creative writing. Someone doesn’t just come out the gate a Hemingway or a Ishiguro. Not even Hemingway or Ishiguro. It takes years of honing and practicing and (almost always) relying on the advice of others to better your craft. Molly McCowan of Inkbot Editing has a great post where she talks about the importance of an editor in writing and relying on the advice of others. There seems to be a common misconception that great writing just is. It springs up out of nowhere, BAM. New York Times Bestseller and long-lasting masterpiece.
My favorite part of the process has always been revision. To me, the first draft is that lumpy pile of clay and I don’t even know where to start or what shape it really is by the time I’ve written it. In revision, however, I start to see the true form and I feel most inspired. That’s what editors are here for, to feed you that inspiration and cut out that shape you’re trying to find, Mold your treasured words before you put them out into the world.
(featured image by Aaron Burden)
Color me wrong. The best kind of wrong.
There were many happy surprises throughout a film that I was prepped not to like, but found myself charmed instead. It reminded me a bit of the book > film adaptation Mansfield Park (1999) which fills out the heroine’s personality (Fanny Price) with characteristics of the story’s author (Jane Austen). A huge deviation from the book, but something that works for one of Austen’s most criticized heroines.
There’s flecks of Louisa May Alcott’s actual life peppered into Jo’s story in the film (her meetings with her publisher) which rely less on the source text of Little Women and more on the actual journey of Alcott as an author. Not a bad choice considering I think the book, overall, is a bit more saccharine than Alcott seemed to be herself.
A friend tipped me off that the story was told in a non-linear fashion, events unfold out of sequence and the movie does a great deal of timeline hopping. This actually reminded me of my initial reading of the novel when I was in high school. I was given the SECOND installment of Little Women, published under the title Good Wives in 1869, as a gift and read it without knowing it was the first half of Alcott’s now famous tale of the March sisters. Much as this reading experience didn’t affect my appreciation of the story – neither did the this choice for the film. A technique of which I am usually skeptical, but Gerwig uses it effectively. One example is with Professor Bhaer.
He’s the first man we meet in the film as it works it’s way back to him again. This gives the audience more familiarity with him than in the book where he can seem like a tacked-on love interest after Jo’s rejection of Laurie. That’s my take on it anyway. If you’re looking for a more in-depth reason as to why Prof. Bhaer is so dreamy in this version I think The Cut covers that pretty well here. And I agree with Gerwig’s choice.
I think the 90s version still has my, overall, favorite casting choices. I won’t harp too much on comparing one film version to another as this is a novel > film comparison, ultimately. I think each adaptation brings it’s own strengths/weaknesses to the table. HOWEVER, if you want a good laugh that will leave you wondering if some critics ever bother to read the source material you can always click here to see why one man thinks what I consider an OK adaptation is OMFG THE BEST EVER. He pretty much hates everything Greta did with a vehement passion and offers no justification tying it back to the actual novel. He says Gerwig “settles for sentimentality.” Classic. Um, have you even *read* Little Women, bro? It’s sentimental AF. Why is that a bad thing? ROTFL. #endrant
Other than that, the reviews I found online were mostly favorable. Mine being one of them. I could go on about casting choices (surprised how much I enjoyed Emma Watson as Meg in this, Gerwig really seemed to bring out her acting chops and not just rely on her Emma Watson-ing), but I think I was pleased with most of them. The actors played well off each other and the sister-dynamic that is so crucial to the telling of Little Women was present and accounted for. Amy was much more grounded in this, but I attribute that to a slight rewriting of her character and less on Florence Pugh’s performance. Another change I didn’t mind.
I think if an audience member comes into this film with no expectations and fresh eyes it can be an amazing experience. I didn’t think a new version of this story was needed. Now, I’m glad we have this one in the canon. I think Gerwig made it just different enough to introduce a new generation to the March sisters and renew an interest in Alcott and her legacy. I just wish the previews didn’t make it seem like such a feminist manifesto, save for a few bolder scenes (Amy’s speech about marriage to Laurie), the film is much more nuanced than that (Jo’s speech to her mother about being independent, but also lonely <— REAL LIFE).
I recommend Little Women (2019) right up there with my other favorite version(s) of the film. Oh yeah, the book is pretty great too.
The second half of The Horse Whisperer certainly lost its momentum. It’s one of those books that’s easy to read (I got through it in just under a week), but I’ve been putting off this review because I didn’t like it. So, not sure if I was really aching to write this post. The prose of the book isn’t even bad! Aside from some awkward sex scenes, but then, I don’t even read romance novels so I may not be an authority on what makes a GOOD sex scene.
I will say this, I enjoyed the movie far more. This was one of those rare instances where the movie was definitely better than the book. Fight me, this film came out in 1998. Where the movie succeeded and the book didn’t, to me, was making the focus not Annie, but Annie and Grace’s relationship. There’s an equal weight to both of their arc’s. Come to think of it, I don’t even think Annie has an arc in the book. She starts out a selfish, controlling woman who continues to be selfish and controlling up until the end, cheats on her husband and gets pregnant by the man she “truly loves.”
Everything is all well and good in her world when all you want is for her to nose-dive off a cliff.
The only sad part is when Tom is trampled by a herd of wild mustang (actually super random and kinda funny) and dies. Really, he should be thankful, he would have had to spend the rest of his life with one helluva woman.
The film keeps Tom alive at the end and has Annie “doing the right thing” and going back to her family. Sure, the story doesn’t have to end on a moral high note, but I think it felt like a more natural ending to this saga, otherwise, what was that all for? Going back to my Gone With the Wind analogy, it’s not like at the conclusion of that story where Rhett’s walking away, and you get it, but there’s a small part of you thinking: “But they should be together! I don’t know why because she’s terrible, but they should! ”
Nicholas Evans, I am way late to this gravy train, but this book was not the business.
For those who don’t know me, I hate research. Okay, I don’t HATE research, but I’m not a huge fan of it by rigid academic standards where they want you to show your work like in a math problem. I’m far too free of a sprit when it comes to what I read and consider research. “Reasearch-y” type books with stilted academic language drive me crazy. So, when I picked up The Art of Adaptation: Turning Fact and Fiction Into Film by Linda Seger from the shelf of my university library I gave it a mad side eye.
I’m not going to act like I know everything there is to know about writing. I don’t. I have a blog I barely update, 1 degree (and coming up on another in “creative writing” – whatever that means) and most of what I write remains either in the slush pile somewhere or between the pages of my journal. What does that mean? I read more and write more and read more and write more. Gotta get better in the meantime. By the “meantime” I mean the space in which I avoid writing my dissertation.
Seger’s book was written in the 1990s so it’s a tad outdated – and almost hilarious with how much Seger talks about a potential The Phantom of the Opera (based on the Lloyd-Webber musical) film adaptation. Oddly enough, most of her suggestions were addressed in the subsequent 2004 adaptation. She talks about Field of Dreams a LOT as an example of an adaptation that made some significant changes, but still was a successful translation to the silver screen. And I’m a firm believer in films still being true to the book and decent translations of the original text even if they veer here and there. Hey, I even have/had a podcast about it! But that’s MIA right now…
What I like most about Seger’s approach though is, she’s been in the trenches, she’s been consulting on scripts herself since 1981 so she’s not just theorizing what does and what does not work. You can kind of tell the authors of these “how-to” books who have never actually done the job themselves. They use “perhaps” and “quite possibly” a lot…
Nah, in my mind, something either does or does not work, and that’s the approach Seger takes. The first 4 chapters alone detail why specific genres defy the transition to the screen: Why Literature Resist Film, Why Theatre [sic] Resists Film, Why the True-life Story Resists Film etc. Brilliant. Start with what doesn’t work. ANNNND the whole book runs just over 200 pages. No need to wax on.
I think my other major take aways are her discussions on style and tone and the need to clearly establish these in the beginning of a film/screenplay. Film is a different medium than a novel, you don’t have as much time to rest on your laurels in exposition (I’m looking at you Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them). And a change in style or tone mid-film can alienate an audience and throw them off. She didn’t use this as an example, but Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones, for one. The book is set firmly in the realm of fantasy until midway through the main character, The Wizard Howl, steps into the real world. In Hayao Miyazaki’s film of the same name the entire story remains firmly rooted in fantasy and it’s wonderful. A shift in the middle would have made it feel like a different film entirely.
What I’m trying to say is, if you want a good, no-nonsense approach to adapting something into a screenplay, this is a good read OR if you’ve ever watched an adaptation of one of your favorite things and thought, “This… doesn’t work…” and can’t figure out why, Seger probably has the answer.
Where have you been, Kassie? That’s a very good question. I’m living in the UK! Fatherland of Great Literature and I find myself (as a student) with far more time to read than I had before in my crazy busy life in southern California. So, I thought I’d dip back into this for my own enjoyment. It was hard to get myself to sit down and read for long stretches of time (if you can believe it) I kept thinking there were other things I should be doing. BUT I managed to knock out The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell in just over a week. This book was first published in 1949. I was reading an edition from the 1960s borrowed from my school library because, well, poor student – but it served its purpose. I know there’s been more recent editions published so some of my criticisms may have been addressed in subsequent editions, but we can’t all be high-rollers. This book is fairly dense so I will try to keep to short and make it go down easily.
I have a basic familiarity with Joseph Campbell (and by basic I mean I sat through 6 hours of DVD interviews with him) and I have to say a lot of his theories and ideas I think are something that would come to any enthusiast for other cultures/mythologies/religions (you’re talking to the woman who picked up a volume of Finnish folks tales and dabbled in Journey to the West FOR FUN). The ideas that all mythos are interconnected in some great psychological, cosmic (I almost said “cosmotic”) way I think is valid. Although he uses a lot of Freud and dream analogy as evidence for this idea and I think you’d have to be quite a Freudian to go along with some of Campbell’s arguments in that area.
I do love the idea of the monomyth – that there’s one great overarching story we share – and a similar hero’s journey cross cultures. By the end of the book though, I’m not quite convinced he’s gotten his point across that man uses this to find religion in himself: “It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero . . . every one of us shares the supreme ordeal–carries the cross of the redeemer . . . in the silences of his personal despair” (391). The conclusion is something I get but I don’t know that he’s spent enough time in his text arguing that point and using the evidence to support it. I think Campbell may have stretched himself too thin. This book is dense with research into folk tales and the traditions of other cultures. He may have served his purpose better by choosing fewer examples to give an easily distracted reader, such as myself, more to latch onto.
Now, I’m no feminist, but Campbell hardly references the female journey or “coming of age” rites in this book as well. Granted, he’s a male writer who really wasn’t considering this – which is fine – not really a criticism of him, but if he’s going to apply a universal message to the end it might have been good to see more of the feminine aspects of the societies he analyzes. His does his best to give fair play to the female (and even bisexual) roles of male/female dichotomy in mythology and it’s not his fault women throughout time have mostly played an ancillary role in some of these stories. Still, this is a point worth noting as I am reading this from the opposite perspective… even though most of my heroes are men.
His Catholic roots also show through great deal in this book, more than I think he even realizes. I had to laugh in the DVDs I was watching when he seemed so anti-established religion at times and then called for a return to traditional (I think even Latin) Catholic ceremonies in an effort to call humanity back to ritual which he seems to think is the backbone of order for future generations. I thought, “What a snob you are Joseph Campbell!” To wrap this up, I don’t think this book brought on any major revelations for me, but you can tell it’s fairly exhaustive and Campbell brings up a lot of good points about the interconnectivity of mankind, our search for glory and purpose, and our efforts to understand the world around us for eons and eons. I would love to see someone write a counter to it since it seems these ideas have gone relatively uncontested for so long.
I’m trying to think of something I’ve read recently since it seems to have been so much time since I published a post. I read a lot so it’s not like I’ve not read anything it’s just a matter of choosing something. I thought of one… a book I hated reading: The Martian by Andy Weir. My friend Thomas and I were trying to work our way through some bestsellers and this was the first one we decided to try. He ripped through it like a pro. I started off strong and hobbled through it for a month… or two… or was it three?
I have a hard time reading a book I don’t like. Even when I’m determined to finish it. I mean, it was even made into a movie so it has to be good, right? Wrong. I didn’t even mind all of the crazy theoretical science. I think had Weir weaved it expertly into the narrative (a la Jules Verne) I could have followed the story more easily, but it wasn’t even the science that bothered me, it was: Mark Watney. One of the most annoying characters I’ve read to-date. He reminded me of that guy at a party who’s trying to be funny, but no one is laughing at his jokes. Maybe it was just me, but I did not find myself laughing at any of his many “wise-cracks.” He says, “Yippeee” way to many times and all I see is a teenage boy on a gamer message board.
Maybe one could argue, well, he’s that adult science-nerd type of guy who fits the character-type. But even what other characters said about him didn’t make sense. One even said he was chosen for the Mars mission because he’s “that kind of guy everyone likes” or something to that effect. I didn’t buy it. I do want to see the film because I think Matt Damon would make me like this guy. Almost like when you read a script and you can’t wait to see how an actor adds depth to a flat person on the page. Watney had no depth. There’s was no reason I wanted to see him get off of Mars. And, hey, I’m not rooting for the main character if I don’t like him. None of the others characters drew me out either, they seemed more like caricatures from a 90s sitcom or some of them were so bland they just blended into each other. Bring on the movie, I’m done with the book.
Ever wonder what two women with degrees think about some of the popular adaptations of great works of literature? Now is your chance to find out by listening to the It’s Not That Terrible podcast where me and my pal Camilla tear apart and analyze literary classics and their film adaptations. This episode features commentary on Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice (everyone’s favorite) and its 2005 film adaptation (not everyone’s favorite) directed by Joe Wright and starring Keira Knightley and Matthew MacFadyen .
Click Here to download the first episode. Special thanks to Ace Garcia for our music.
Up next: The ever popular and currently over-blown The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Too Lit to Quit 