I came across this article recently about the prospect of filming “Catcher in the Rye”, and whether or not the book really is “unfilmable.” Salinger naturally refused to sell the rights during his lifetime, but with his recent death comes a renewed swirl of intrigue over the idea of a movie.
Personally, I think it would be a terrible idea — well intentioned and undoubtedly irresistible — but terrible nevertheless. I used to think that seeing Holden portrayed on screen would an interesting and satisfying experience, but since I’ve been re-reading the book, I’ve changed my mind rather drastically. How would Holden’s voice ever be captured on film? The bulk of the novel takes place inside his head, and the plot follows his thoughts as they ramble and meander across the pages — the beauty of the narrative lies in its rambling disorganization, its wonderful digressions. Most of the best lines in the entire book aren’t dialogue, but thought; with the novel, I feel as though I’m literally reading Holden’s mind. What would the result of that be onscreen? The only way to really capture most of the book would be through an actor’s voiceover, which is a tricky technique at the best of times; I suppose if it was really well done, it would work, but the film would run an awful danger of sounding grating and clichéd. And, of course, what actor could play a convincing Holden?
Perhaps I’ve just been burned too many times, watching some of my favorite books be turned into misguided and wrongly-cast screen adaptations (though, to Hollywood’s credit, there have been a few good ones). Or, maybe it’s the fact that it seems like sheer hypocrisy to put a character who despises movies as much as Holden does — “If there’s one thing I hate, it’s the movies. Don’t even mention them to me.” — on the screen. With a bunch of phonies, no doubt.
That’s just my opinion, though (and I admit, I can be incredibly picky). How do you think a “Catcher” movie would fare? And who could play Holden?
I finally went to see the new Sherlock Holmes adaptation with no small amount of trepidation. For years, Holmes and I have been very well acquainted and I was afraid my clear, well-defined image of a character I so loved would be muddled and abused by watching the film. I walked into the movie theater slightly nervous, and came out…pleasantly surprised.
There is no doubt that Robert Downey Jr. plays a very different Sherlock — one without the hawk-like nose, questionable drug addiction and cat-like cleanliness of appearance. I knew within the first fifteen seconds of the film that this was not my Sherlock, the vision of which is very meticulously imagined in my mind. Still, that didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy Downey’s clever acting, or Jude Law’s surprisingly good turn as Watson, and the interesting banter between them, which I think was a bit limited and overshadowed by the looming heaviness of the action scenes. Downey was, as always, fascinating to watch, playing up Holmes’ eccentricity and lending his character a more whimsical air, which nicely counterbalanced Jude Law’s stolid but unstuffy Watson. I was also pleased to see that Law’s performance elevated Watson out of the dim and stodgy stereotype that has so plagued the poor fellow.
Despite the changes wrought in Sherlock by the film, I was surprised by the details that still rang true from the original stories. The deduction that a pocket watch with a scratched keyhole must belong to a drunken man was lifted straight from Conan Doyle’s pages, and the scene of Holmes engaging in bare-knuckle boxing had it’s roots in “The Sign of the Four”, in which Holmes greets a former boxing champ turned bodyguard with fond reminisces of their match against each other. There were even a few sprinklings of familiar Sherlock-isms; Downey lazes around his (uncharacteristically) sloppy Baker Street rooms and moans, “My mind rebels at stagnation.” Sadly, there were fewer lines in the script that allowed Downey to show the full extent of his character’s fierce intelligence, or the amusing mixture of arrogance and impatience with which Holmes often regards those of lesser intellectual powers.
I picked up Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood this summer and slowly worked my way through most of it, only to leave it lying unattended by my bedside for months.
Not that it isn’t a gripping tale. The non-fiction, which details the murder of a family of four in rural Kansas, often has the same appeal as a good horror flick. Before the bloody deed is done, it’s easy to get wrapped up in the suspense: the only question is how the victims, Mr. Clutter and his family, will be snuffed out.
My problem came after Kansas detectives bag Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, Mr. Clutter’s twisted assailants. Perhaps my disinterest can be blamed on having seen Philip Seymour Hoffman’s brilliant turn as the author in the 2005 film Capote. Unfortunately, I know how this story is going to end.
That aside, I’ve got a bigger bone to pick with Capote, and it has to do with good old-fashioned journalism. Capote’s claim to fame was his ability to conjure vivid, true-to-life scenes from actual events. The author himself called In Cold Blood a “nonfiction novel,” and laid claim to its total veracity.
Haworth parsonage, the Brontës' home in Yorkshire, England
“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will.” – Jane Eyre
Despite the holiday rush, I have unofficially allotted this month as the time to catch up on all the books I think I’ve read, should have read, or never properly read. All the Dickenses I’ve missed, all the Narnia Chronicles I never got around to (which is most of them), all the James Joyce stories that I’ve always been too intimidated to try (Joyce still scares me, just a bit). In the last week, though, thanks to a five-dollar sale on classics at Borders, I have finally conquered the literary demon that has so rancorously pricked my guilt for the last decade or so. I have fallen, perhaps ten years too late, for “Jane Eyre.”
My relationship with the Brontë classic was, for many years, slightly troubled. I blame in part the preponderance of miscast film adaptations (a tradition that I worry may continue in the new, forthcoming movie of “Jane Eyre”). Jane seemed to me meek and uninteresting, while Mr. Rochester never seemed to exude much romantic appeal (such is the danger of watching the films before reading the book). I felt a certain amount of posthumous sibling rivalry simmering from the ghosts of Haworth parsonage; as I had eagerly devoured both Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne Brontë’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall”, it troubled me that Charlotte alone was neglected.
Last week, however, I finally decided to brush away all this literary baggage and give poor Miss Eyre another chance. About a hundred pages into the story, the knotty, doubting clouds scattered at last and the uncertainty with which I had so often regarded this book cleared for good.
Charlotte Brontë
To say that I enjoyed reading “Jane Eyre” is a gross understatement — I fell in love with it, as deeply and wholeheartedly as it is possible to fall in love with a fictional world. How could I have so misjudged a book? The submissive, colorless Jane I remembered was swept away by a new vision of a strong, capable heroine with an unshakable sense of herself. This was a woman who resisted the controlling desires of not one, but two masterful men, who listened deeply to her heart but would not be ruled by it. She had the moral and personal strength to reject the prospect of happiness because it would have required a sacrifice of her most fundamental principles — not as a martyr, but simply as someone who would not undermine herself for any prize. Jane was courageous, even when wracked with fear, sensible, even when faced with the senseless, and fiercely intelligent, even when the contemporaneous view of women condemned her to ignorance. She is the role model of role models; I can only imagine the generations of young women that she has inspired in her wake, and am proud to finally join their ranks.
And then, Mr. Rochester: words cannot possibly express how mistakenly I judged the Byronic hero of “Jane Eyre.” In my feeble defense, I can only plead that I was never properly introduced to him, and thus decided on a weak and baseless knowledge that, in the canon of Great British Males, he was vastly inferior to, say, Mr. Darcy. But — without attempting to compare those two estimable literary gentlemen — I concede my former opinion of Edward Fairfax Rochester. He is neither sweet nor handsome – often described as an “ugly man” — and is often brutal in both temper and teasing. He spars intellectually with Jane, calls her a sprite and an imp who has “bewitched” him, and even toys cruelly with her affections by cavorting about with a beautiful heiress. He is by no means a perfect hero, with flawed judgment and dark demons, both emotional and corporeal. And yet, he is completely irresistible, to both Jane and the reader, perhaps because his love for the former redeems his less admirable qualities. While he growls to the rest of the world, he beams with Mediterranean warmth in the presence of his “Janet.” He is able to speak words of adoration that, on the lips of any other character, would smack of sentimental corniness. When he utters his offer to Jane to be his “second self, and best earthly companion” — in short, an equal in both mind and spirit — what else can the reader do but melt?
Everyone knows ‘A Christmas Carol.’ The tale of the frightfully avaricious Scrooge, the impecunious Bob Cratchit and his effervescent Tiny Tim is all but inescapable during the holidays. There have been countless stage productions and films, including the new Disney version, and everyone has heard a thousand and one times the famed exclamation from the crusty old codger: “Bah, humbug!” Indeed, I don’t believe any single word has ever been so wholly and incontrovertibly connected with one character as ‘humbug’ is with Scrooge. ‘A Christmas Carol’ is ubiquitous come December, and with good reason – nothing encompasses the spirit of the season in quite the same way.
But when was the last time you actually read ‘A Christmas Carol’? That thought struck me about two weeks ago, as I was stuck sick in bed, feeling miserable and decidedly un-festive. I’ve been in a very Dickensian mood lately and, between re-reading ‘Great Expectations’ and starting ‘Nicholas Nickleby’, I fished out my copy of ‘A Christmas Carol’ and re-read the story very swiftly — it’s quite short, particularly by Dickens’ standards — marveling as I did so. Because of the book’s familiarity, we often forget it’s power, which is no less potent now than it was upon first perusal some 166 years ago.
My initial impression was of the story’s eeriness — I believe Dickens somewhat missed a calling as a writer of macabre fiction in the style of Edgar Allan Poe. Marley’s clanking ghost is far more chilling in print then he could ever be on film or stage, his appearance tinged, of course, with the innately Dickensian hint of bizarre comedy. The spirits of Christmas are vividly described — I found I’d completely forgotten what the Ghost of Christmas Past even looked like — and the scenes of Christmases both past and present are so sharply evoked that I newly appreciated the loveliness of Dickens’ prose:
“…they stood in the city streets on Christmas morning, where (for the weather was severe) the people made a rough, but brisk and not unpleasant kind of music, in scraping the snow from the pavement in front of their dwellings, and from the tops of their houses: whence it was mad delight to the boys to see it come plumping down into the road below, and splitting into artificial little snow-storms…The sky was gloomy, and the shortest streets were choked up with a dingy mist, half thawed, half frozen, whose heavier particles descended in shower of sooty atoms, as if all the chimneys in Great Britain had, by one consent, caught fire, and were blazing away to their dear hearts’ content. There was nothing very cheerful in the climate or the town, and yet was there an air of cheerfulness abroad that the clearest summer air and brightest summer sun might have endeavoured to diffuse in vain.”
- Chapter 3, The Second of the Three Spirits
The strength of the book, though, is of course in its message, which still leaps out and grabs the reader by the throat with a surprisingly strong grip, even if you’ve heard the tale a hundred times. Each of us, despite all the good we may do or feel, can most likely identify the odd Scrooge-like moment in our own lives, and Dickens meant us to squirm a little with guilt as we read. Yet, there is of course redemption for old Mr. Scrooge at the end and so, the author intimates, redemption for us too, for whatever small failings we have accrued over the year. The story is, ultimately, one of transformation, and of the power of good locked within even the crustiest and most irredeemable hearts.
As with much of Dickens’ work, there are natural parallels we can always draw to the present. The author lived in a time of extraordinary poverty and exceeding avarice, an era of swindlers and dupery, when the poorest were left to wither in the mud and fog of London’s streets and the debtors were locked securely behind iron bars – a fate Dickens knew all too well from his own past. His novels and stories are littered with morality, the triumph of good in the face of the wicked, the struggle of the oppressed against their detractors, and ‘A Christmas Carol’ is perhaps the most thickly laced with meaning. G.K. Chesterton once said, ‘a good novel tells us the truth about its hero’ and Dickens’ tale does just that, leading us with cathartic intent to find in ourselves the fundamental qualities, both good and evil, of Ebeneezer Scrooge. It’s an optimistic reminder of our own humanity, and how easy it is to reclaim it through even the simplest and most insignifcant acts of good. Dickens intended to drive home a clear message with his tale of holiday and humbug and I believe that he succeeded more wildly than he could have ever imagined in 1843.
This seems to be the year of John Keats: in July, his house was reopened to the public in Hampstead Heath, London, and this week, “Bright Star”, the new film about Keats’ brief love affair with Fanny Brawne, opens in theatres. Directed by Jane Campion, the movie got a lovely review in the New York Times and I hope that Campion will do for Keats what she did for Henry James in her wonderful adaptation of “The Portrait of a Lady”, one of my favorite books.
Intrigued by the recent Keats renaissance of sorts, I made a trip to the library in search of his poems – thus far, poor Mr. Keats had been rather overshadowed by Percy Shelley and Lord Byron in my modest study of 19th century poets. Reading Keats over the past few weeks, though, I’ve been struck by how beautifully fresh and almost modern his verse seems, unmarred by the dusty coverlet of nearly two centuries. His words have such a delightful elegance and I’m continually amazed just how much he matured in such a short life — his poems have a depth that’s remarkable when you consider that he was only 25 when he died.
As the Times stated, no movie can ever fully capture the exquisiteness of his poetry as it appears on the page, but I hope that “Bright Star” will at the very least encourage a new generation, like me, to pick up a volume of his work and appreciate the purity of his genius. I’m certainly inspired to read, in addition to his verse, the Keats biography written by Britain’s former poet laureate, Andrew Motion. And, as I have a weakness for both Romantic poets and romantic movies, “Bright Star” is definitely my must-see film for the fall (it comes to Stamford’s Avon Theater on Friday, Sept. 25).
Here’s a taste of the poem that, I assume, inspired the film’s title. Interestingly, a line from another of Keats’ poems, “Ode to a Nightingale”, provided the title for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Tender is the Night.”
BRIGHT star! would I were steadfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature’s patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No—yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.
Reading Rainbow, a favorite from my childhood, is to end its 26-year run, NPR reports. I’m so sad. How will kids know what to read without LeVar Burton?
As the summer melts blissfully into the thick, sultry humidity of August, the library can become a delicious oasis of cool; the air-conditioned stacks of arid-smelling books and chilled silence of the hushed reading rooms are a delight on the hottest, muggiest of days. What could possibly be more delicious, more satisfying and better suited to cut the cloying heat of a sticky mid-afternoon than the delectably bookish pleasure of library-themed ice cream?
That’s right — Ben & Jerry’s is considering the launch of a library-themed ice cream flavor, spurred by the campaign of New Jersey librarian Andy Woodworth. Woodworth wanted to bring attention to the current plight of the public library, suffering beneath the burden of slashed budgets, so he embarked on this crusade to combine the academic with the gastronomic. His Facebook group to support the idea has already garnered over 4,000 eager followers and more are sure to follow in the trail of such a delicious idea. After all, if Jerry Garcia, Dave Matthews and Stephen Colbert can inspire their own flavors, why not the library?
A few of flavor ideas being bandied around already sound scrumptious:
- “Gooey Decimal System = Dark fudge alphabet letters with caramel swirls in hazelnut ice cream.”
- “Cookie Bookie = a combination of cookie bits!”
- “Li-Berry Pie = Lime sherbet mixed with raspberry sauce and pie crust crumbles (cinnamon sugar, butter, piecrust).”
- “Rocky Read = vanilla with chocolate covered nuts chocolate chunks and raisins.”
- “Sh-sh-sh-Sherbet! = Key Lime or a Chocolate/Vanilla combination.”
- “Malt Whitman” = malt ice cream with chocolate alphabet letters and two caramel and fudge swirls.”
The Facebook group includes a link where interested bookworms and ice cream afincianados alike can suggest a flavor right to Ben & Jerry’s. Personally, I’d vote for “Gooey Decimal System” but does anyone have any other mouth-watering suggestions?
***
And, in other food-related news, I found this post in the New Yorker book blog that just made me smile — the team at The Book Bench “decided it would make sense to put on our Zagat hats and reduce great works of fiction to mediocre restaurants.” Suggestions include “The Sound and the Curry”, “Rabbits at Rest Free-Range BBQ”, “War and Pizza”, “Grapes of Wrath” winebar and “Animal Farm”, a gastro-pub where the sausage “occasionally talks back.” Dinner, anyone?
For November, I'll be reading American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham, which won the Pulitzer Prize last year. We'll update our book club selection for December and January shortly.
Marilyn Ramos is a partner at the Stamford litigation law firm of Silver Golub & Teitell. She is a member of the Connecticut Trial Lawyers Association and the Connecticut Bar Association. She is currently on the Board of Directors of the Fairfield County Bar Association and the Fairfield County Bar Foundation. She received her law degree from Pace University School of Law in 1989 and is a member of the Connecticut and New York bars. Prior to her career in law, she was a teacher with the Greenwich Public Schools and worked for the Stamford Human Rights Commission. Her views expressed on this blog are completely her own and do not represent those of Silver Golub & Teitell.
Roy J. Nirschel is president of Roger Williams University in Bristol, R.I. He grew up in Stamford and his father was a firefighter on the West Side. He received his bachelor's degree from Southern Connecticut State University and went on to receive a master's degree in public administration and a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Miami. He has traveled around the world, visiting 35 countries, but said, "I can’t credit on the road with getting me on the road."
Everyone knows ‘A Christmas Carol.’ The tale of the frightfully avaricious Scrooge, the impecunious Bob Cratchit and his effervescent Tiny Tim is all but inescapable during the holidays. There have been countless stage productions and films, including the new Disney version, and everyone has heard a thousand and one times the famed exclamation from the crusty old codger: “Bah, humbug!” Indeed, I don’t believe any single word has ever been so wholly and incontrovertibly connected with one character as ‘humbug’ is with Scrooge. ‘A Christmas Carol’ is ubiquitous come December, and with good reason – nothing encompasses the spirit of the season in quite the same way.
