My Enduring Love of Books (and a few that changed my life!)
I was five years old when my mother taught me to read. She was fearless enough to teach me at home before homeschooling was an almost-mainstream industry, and her proactive interest in my education helped me become the person I am today. From kindergarten to high school, I was able to digest information and learn life’s necessary subjects (and sometimes not so necessary, I still haven’t used algebra outside of school) at my own pace. When I understood something well, I had the option of blasting through several days’ worth of assignments in an afternoon, freeing up space for later in the week. If a subject was more of a challenge, there were no rigid timetables pushing us to close the books before my comprehension was complete.
It wasn’t my intent to turn this entry into a homeschooling bugle, but I’m proud of the way I learned the fundamentals before college. And I say all of the above to say this: books have always been a huge part of my life. As I said, I learned to read at age five, starting easy with large-print, small-word selections out of a children’s Bible. By age seven, I was cracking open and devouring books written in print much too small for my young eyes, and I have a feeling that it was this early and insatiable appetite for the written word that left me as blind as a bat in the present day without corrective lenses.
On principle, all books were and are created equal to me. Some are of course written better than others, but I’ll give most any written work a chance before I pass judgment on it. Except for Twilight. I would need a very large cash incentive to read Twilight. (Is that joke already too dated? What pop culture phenomenon do people love to hate right now? I spent the summer in India and I’m out of the snark loop.) With this and similar exceptions, I grew up reading fiction and non-fiction with equal interest. The ghostwritten Hardy Boys series of detective stories was the first series to grab me by the imagination and hang on tight. While my peers in the early and mid-nineties were trading Pokemon cards in an effort to “collect ‘em all,” I could be found sprawled across the living room floor trying to read ‘em all. As I grew a little older, I traced Frank and Joe Hardy’s literary ancestry back through time to a small sitting room at 221B Baker Street, and my love of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories began long before Robert Downey, Jr. and Benedict Cumberbatch made them mainstream again. But I loved more than just detective novels...
Well-wrought fiction might have been my first love, but I also read non-fiction books in large numbers. Growing up, one of my favorite things to do on a slow day was to pull a volume of the encyclopedia off of the shelf and read articles at random. The feel and smell of the old volumes are still fresh in my mind. One more plus to homeschooling was the time I had after regular subjects for self-directed study of any topics I found interesting. I was always drawn most strongly to a smattering of famous or colorful historic figures like Teddy Roosevelt and Stonewall Jackson, or to oddball topics like the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot, but there was rarely a day that went by when I wasn’t learning something new about something. My present love of non-fiction is almost stronger than my love of pure fiction, manifesting itself in near-mania for books (and now also blogs) about apologetics, cinema history, travel, martial arts, kinesiology, body chemistry and more.
The joy of reading and self-directed study always felt impinged by my college studies, which monopolized my time to the exclusion of most activities I found enjoyable. The year in which I failed to finish a single book from beginning to end ranks as one of the most miserable periods of my life thus far, and was reflected in my attitude at the time. If anything made me resent college, it was that my personal “college experience” was not one of learning as much as it was the memorization and parroting of data for its own sake. I resorted to purchasing audiobooks on iTunes in a last-ditch effort to get a book fix during my lengthy, twice-daily commutes between home and the campus.
Since my graduation in the early summer, I have not had assignments every night or needed to get up before the sun every morning to finish whatever assignments I could not complete the previous evening. That is to say, I haven’t had to; now, I have the beautiful freedom to do so because I simply want to get up early and read or write for a few hours while the house is quiet and I can savor the taste of the coffee as the sun rises outside my window. The freedom is, well, freeing. Much like I stockpile one or two gourmet candy bars every week in anticipation of my Saturday cheat day (life is too short for Hershey's), the last semester of school saw me on eBay and Craigslist stocking up on used, five-dollar hardbacks of Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck and more of my favorite writers. Much like the promise of a weekend treat, I eagerly resuming my old reading habits.
Now, to bring this runaway mine cart back to the hill station where I originally intended it to arrive.
As books regained their place as a natural part of daily life, I read a few that hit me between the eyes with their depth and the authors’ powerful perceptions. But there were more still that didn’t settle for a mere blow to the head--a few lowered their aim by about eighteen inches and struck to the heart. The kind of books that burrowed into my soul and refused to leave. It seems a shame to keep them to myself, and I wanted to provide a list of them and the impact they made on my heart and mind.
The Primal Blueprint, by Mark Sisson
"In fact, carbohydrates are not required in the human diet for survival the way fat and protein are." - Mark Sisson
I list this book first because it helped me to better enjoy the others. A little over a year ago, I was on the fast-track toward clinical obesity. I was fifty pounds overweight, I had asthma and a bizarre butt-to-calf ratio that made finding jeans a quest for rare and exotic species of trouser. It became clear to me that my situation had gone beyond the “lay off desserts for a while” phase and warranted a serious change in lifestyle.
Oh no, here Steven goes again. I thought he dropped the whole paleo thing. Please, God, not another rant about wheat...
Enter Mark Sisson and The Primal Blueprint.
Mark Sisson is a former Olympic marathoner who fought an uphill battle against IBS and other uncomfortable problems for most of his career. After injuries forced him out of the marathoning game, he returned to his first love of nutritional science and researched in earnest to find out what makes the human body work most optimally. Mark’s blog, Mark's Daily Apple, and later his book, are the sum total of everything he has learned and put into practice. Not only has he not had IBS in years, but at age 59, he looks better (and performs better athletically) than most thirty year-olds. Sisson’s material outlines the differences between the diet and lifestyle by which early mankind sustained itself until the agricultural revolution and the rise of domesticated wheat and cereal grains as the staves of life for earth’s oldest empires. The science is sound, and the presentation is so relatable that even a right-brainer like me can understand it. By following Mark’s guidelines for a lifestyle of habitual, healthy exercise and a grain-free diet rich in animal protein, vegetables and fruit, I didn’t just “lose a few pounds,” I lost fifty pounds and haven’t felt a single allergy or asthmatic wheeze in over a year.
Sisson’s book remains one of the seminal works published in the field of “ancestral health,” and by reading his book and blog I was introduced to other stanchions of a rapidly-growing movement of individuals willing to take the non-conventional route back to health and human potential.
Since first reading Sisson, my opinions on diet have evolved. It worked so well for me that in my enthusiasm I was often impatient with people who stuck to the tired conventional wisdom that saturated fat was inherently unhealthy (it isn’t) and that whole grains were healthy (they’re not). My attitude has finally softened, and I even allow myself the luxury of one day a week “off” to have some ice cream or nachos. Or both. But the principles of The Primal Blueprint remain true, and based on Mark Sisson’s advice, I feel better and look better than I ever have in my life.
The Gnoll Credo, by J. Stanton
“If you can’t eat it, wear it, wield it, or carry it, leave it behind.” - The Gnoll Credo
The Gnoll Credo is a book of philosophy wrapped in a thin veneer of fictional prose. Another prominent figure in the field of ancestral health and nutrition, though slightly less well-known than the likes of Mark Sisson or Robb Wolf, J. Stanton’s work hints at a personal conviction that quality supersedes quantity. Stanton doesn’t write often, but when he does, his online articles are flawlessly composed, with obsessively cited sources to back up every conclusion. Stanton is an interesting figure as a person also, taking great care to never reveal his face in any of his more personal stories or adventure logs. I have exchanged emails with Stanton on several occasions, and he never fails to be an engaging, friendly and willing dispenser of excellent advice and information.
So, what is The Gnoll Credo about? It’s about us. It’s about our priorities and how we have them completely wrong in the backwards arrangement that we accept as daily, modern life. Stanton introduces a “primitive” race called gnolls (humanoid hyenas) within the context of other accepted fantasy elements, and one gnoll in particular is befriended by a university researcher who, by venturing to the edge of civilization to learn about gnolls, is instead given insight into his own species through the observations of a gnoll named Gryka.
I read the book in a couple of sittings, and the ending left me experiencing a moment of clarity that I usually only have after a stint in India. Through The Gnoll Credo’s spare prose, I gained a fresh insight into the ridiculousness and over-complications of many accepted facts of everyday life in pampered, American culture. The Gnoll Credo is about practical pragmatism, about removing distractions and questioning accepted notions to see if life might not be better without them. The book’s take on life was monumental.
A Tale of Three Kings, by Gene Edwards
It might seem odd that my love of Christian apologetics runs parallel to my extreme interest in a branch of nutritional science usually given in an evolutionary context, but it does. Gene Edwards was introduced to me by some Sunday school teachers at my church when I was twelve or thirteen, and even then his words were so meaningful that I returned to his books ten years later.
A Tale of Three Kings uses three examples from scripture as the models for leadership within the Church. Saul, David and Absalom are all presented as archetypes that continue to be seen in the Church today. Saul was an unbroken leader, willful and disobedient, but nonetheless anointed by God for a purpose. Less than perfect leader though he was, Saul’s ultimate purpose as a leader was to be God’s instrument for breaking David. David typifies a broken leader--an individual whom God allows to experience pain, heartbreak and exile until no more selfishness or personal insecurity remains. What is left is an empty vessel.
Edwards’ expounding of the breaking down process was revelatory to me. It explained much of what I have seen in the church, and what I continue to observe among individuals. Even his description of David’s early life, before Saul’s wrongful accusations and his own exile, was a moving description of solitude being a tool of God’s in order to draw us closer to him and his leading.
The youngest son of any family bears two distinctions: He is considered to be both spoiled and uninformed. Usually little is expected of him. Inevitably, he displays fewer characteristics of leadership than the other children in the family. As a child, he never leads. He only follows, for he has no one younger on whom to practice leadership.
So it is today. And so it was three thousand years ago in a village called Bethlehem, in a family of eight boys. The first seven sons of Jesse worked near their father’s farm. The youngest was sent on treks into the mountains to graze the family’s small flock of sheep.
On those pastoral jaunts, this youngest son always carried two things: a sling and a small, guitarlike instrument. Spare time for a sheepherder is abundant on rich mountain plateaus where sheep can graze for days in one sequestered meadow. But as time passed and days became weeks, the young man became very lonely. The feeling of friendlessness that always roamed inside him was magnified. He often cried. He also played his harp a great deal. He had a good voice, so he often sang. When these activities failed to comfort him, he gathered up a pile of stones and, one by one, swung them at a distant tree with something akin to fury.
When one rock pile was depleted, he would walk to the blistered tree, reassemble his rocks, and designate another leafy enemy at yet a farther distance.
He engaged in many such solitary battles.
This shepherd-singer-slinger also loved his Lord. At night, when all the sheep lay sleeping and he sat staring at the dying fire, he would strum upon his harp and break into quiet song. He sang the ancient hymns of his forefathers’ faith. While he sang he wept, and while weeping he often broke out in abandoned praise—until mountains in distant places lifted up his praise and tears and passed them on to higher mountains, until they eventually reached the ears of God.
I first digested this book as an audiobook during one of my pre-dawn drives to school. The opening chapters had me shedding tears into my coffee before the sun even rose. I realize that my reaction to A Tale of Three Kings might be different than someone else’s, based on my own experiences, but I nonetheless recommend it as a beautiful and insightful look into examples of how God has worked before, and how he might similarly be working in your own life.
The Prisoner in the Third Cell, by Gene Edwards
John the Baptist did everything “right” by the standards of any human observer. He lived an ascetic life of prayer, fasting and self-deprivation so that there would be as little as possible standing between his heart and the leading of God. He baptized Jesus Christ. He stood up for the moral rightness that Israel needed and did not have in its king. And for his pains, he was imprisoned and beheaded. John sent his disciples to ask Jesus if He was the Messiah or if John should wait for another, which hints at the doubt that even he experienced while imprisoned. Jesus gave an answer in the eleventh chapter of Matthew, but verse seven specifies that Christ did not call John the “greatest of men born of women” until after John’s disciples had left his presence. John therefore never even knew how highly Jesus regarded his service.
We have the benefit of perspective in a survey of John the Baptist’s life. This perspective, expanded by scriptural context and two-thousand years of objective distance from the furor that surrounded John’s well-publicized arrest and execution, is a luxury which we do not have in our own lives. But the same principles apply to our own lives as they did in John’s. There was a purpose to John’s existence, though he never knew it while he was alive. He felt punished for his service, but Christ proclaimed him as one of the greatest men who ever lived.
Just...read this book.
The Four-Hour Workweek, by Timothy Ferriss
“The commonsense rules of the ‘real world’ are a fragile collection of socially reinforced illusions.” - Timothy Ferriss
"Many years ago," Gaspar said, taking out a copy of Moravia's The Adolescents and thumbing it as he spoke, "I had a library of books, oh, thousands of books -- never could bear to toss one out, not even the bad ones -- and when folks would come to the house to visit they'd look around at all the nooks and crannies stuffed with books; and if they were the sort of folks who don't snuggle with books, they'd always ask the same dumb question."
He waited a moment for a response and when none was forthcoming (the sound of china cups on sink tile), he said, "Guess what the question was."From the kitchen, without much interest: "No idea.""They'd always ask it with the kind of voice people use in the presence of large sculptures in museums. They'd ask me, 'Have you read all these books?'" He waited again, but Billy Kinetta was not playing the game. "Well, young fella, after a while the same dumb question gets asked a million times, you get sorta snappish about it. And it came to annoy me more than a little bit. Till I finally figured out the right answer.
"And you know what that answer was? Go ahead, take a guess."Billy appeared in the kitchenette doorway. "I suppose you told them you'd read a lot of them but not all of them."Gaspar waved the guess away with a flapping hand. "Now what good would that have done? They wouldn't know they'd asked a dumb question, but I didn't want to insult them, either. So when they'd ask if I'd read all those books, I'd say, 'Hell, no. Who wants a library full of books you've already read?'"
When an author shares your book review...
In case you missed it, author Richard Nikoley was kind enough to acknowledge my review of his book Free the Animal: How to Lose Weight and Fat on the Paleo Diet on his own blog. He also shared the review on his Facebook page. I knew there was a possibility that Nikoley might share my review (I went out of my way to make him aware of it, tagging him on Twitter so he would at least see it), so I made sure to proofread and ensure my review was polished before posting; just as I always do. However, when Nikoley shared the review on Facebook, it hit home that my lowly blog had been shared on a site with a huge regular readership and over 3,000 likes on Facebook.
Cue mental crisis!
I immediately scanned back over my post and made a couple of minor wording and punctation adjustments. There were no glaring errors or major misprints, but the idea of easy readability takes on new significance when the audience of a blog and the writer's reputation is suddenly put before a much larger group of people for a short time.
An identical crisis of confidence occurred last year when I reviewed J. Stanton's The Gnoll Credo on HubPages. Eventually, I will learn to let my copy rest for a day or two before proofreading and finally publishing it to the web. It would help me to avoid this crippling state of mind.
Crippling? Yes. The following visual aid should communicate it fairly succinctly.
Eating paleo and shopping in my sleep: "Free the Animal" reviewed.
Writer, blogger and entrepreneur Richard Nikoley is one of the more colorful and unique characters in the paleo blogosphere. He and I are very different people and I don't agree with him on everything by a long shot. The posts on his blog, Free the Animal, are blunt, confrontational, often delivered with unabashed profanity...but they are also downright entertaining. His take-no-prisoners attitude, especially pronounced when met with stupidity or bad reasoning, often provides much-needed doses of reality for the paleo community, whose information-cycling bloggers often seem to exist in a grass-fed and organically-pastured netherworld of online pontification.
The past year saw my own transition into a paleo-style diet and lifestyle. What began as a gradual series of minor lifestyle changes in an effort to lose weight, (portion control, cutting out soda, etcetera), led to deeper study that went beyond weight loss and into the ideas surrounding “ancestral” health. By the time Nikoley released the printed version of his take on paleo living, Free the Animal: How to Lose Weight and Fat on the Paleo Diet, I was already a grain-free, fifty pounds lighter, Vibram-wearing stereotype and I doubted the book would contain information that I hadn’t heard before from one source or another. However, I enjoy the blog and respect the man enough that a purchase of the print edition of Free the Animal was justified.
At least, I think I purchased it.
The exact event of my ordering the book remains a little hazy in my mind. I remember adding it to my Amazon.com wish list, then waking up one morning to an email confirming an order for it. There were extenuating circumstances--it was late in the semester and school was keeping me up at odd hours; I’ve come to expect occasional blackouts during such periods. However, in this case I suspect that a larger game might have been afoot, for upon my telling the 140-character version of this story on Twitter, I received a response from the man himself:
Hmm...well played, sir.
The apparent dubiousness of the purchase aside, I would like to share my opinion on Richard’s book, and how it measured up to my expectations.
The book is quite literally a printed compilation of Nikoley’s blog entries about the paleo lifestyle; compiled and printed by the ebook publishing company, HyperInk. In the interest of reaching a broader audience, Nikoley’s trademark colorful vocabulary has been toned down considerably, but his personality remains strong, as does the communication of his ideas without the extra saltiness.
The book has fourteen major sections, each of them easy to read and digest:
- Introduction
- Chapter 1: The Paleo, Primal, Ancestral Lifestyle
- Chapter 2: Your Inner Animal
- Chapter 3: The Standard American Diet And Other Diet Health Disasters
- Chapter 4: Fat Is King
- Chapter 5: The Cholesterol Con
- Chapter 6: Natural Disease Prevention
- Chapter 7: Eat Like A Caveman
- Chapter 8: The Power of Fasting
- Chapter 9: Evolutionary Exercise And Fitness
- Chapter 10: A Primal Weight Loss Plan
- Chapter 11: Recipes And Supplements
- Chapter 12: Success Stories
- About The Blog
The information in the book is solid and presented cohesively, as can be expected. But instead of giving away all of the information it contains, I would like to hone in what I felt set it apart from most literature about ancestral living. Unlike the path taken by most paleo nutritionists, Free the Animal does more than provide yet another treatise on insulin spikes, omega-3s and fat-protein-carbohydrate ratios; Free the Animal presents the paleo lifestyle as common sense.
Yes, Nikoley discusses nutrition and biology; yes, he discusses the psychology of food and intermittent fasting. But unlike the professional gurus who go to great pains to overawe readers with a doctoral dissertation’s worth of facts, statistics and observational studies, Nikoley’s book lays out the paleo lifestyle and its guiding philosophies in a refreshingly relatable way.
For paleo newcomers, I would honestly recommend Free the Animal as the starting point before moving on to the lengthier works of gurus like Robb Wolf or Mark Sisson. It isn’t that Richard Nikoley or Free the Animal are a “better” choice; to the contrary, most other paleo nutritionists provide much more detailed information, and longer and more colorful books to boot. But the main reason I loved Free the Animal was its no-frills, straightforward presentation. Mark Sisson’s Primal Blueprint changed my life last year, but I have to admit that its sheer amount of information scared me to death when I first picked it up.
By comparison, Free the Animal is both more and less of an assault to those readers who are just beginning to be interested in paleo nutrition. It is more of an assault because Nikoley does not suffer fools lightly and pulls few punches as a communicator. But Free the Animal nevertheless remains extremely relatable. Ever chapter presents its subject(s) through more than just the interpretation of impersonal data; Nikoley relates the impact of ancestral health, nutrition and fitness to everyday life. By attaching it to concrete ideas like personal appearance, productivity and a healthy sex life, the impact of the paleo diet takes on a significance beyond buzzwords like “burning fat” or “building muscle.”
So, is Free the Animal worth purchasing?
If you are already eating like a caveman, chances are you won’t learn anything new. However, if you want good introductory material in your lending library, this is a great book to keep around. And if you need a gift for “one of those friends” who complain ceaselessly about their weight while stubbornly continuing to fill up on empty and processed food products, Richard Nikoley’s Free the Animal might provide the necessary shot in the arm.
Free the Animal (Blog)
Purchase “Free the Animal: Lose Weight and Fat on the Paleo Dietl” on Amazon
Musing on Culture: The Adaptation Problem
The first trailer for Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’ novel The Great Gatsby hit the internet last year. As might be expected of a Baz Lurhmann film, bright colors and elaborate set design swirl into a cinematic cornucopia very much in the vein of Moulin Rouge.
Link: "The Great Gatsby" Trailer
I haven’t seen many of the films in Luhrmann’s oeuvre. I did see Moulin Rouge and did not care for it, but that alone does not prejudice me against Luhrmann as a filmmaker. His films are unique and suit some tastes more than others. The initial news that Luhrmann would be directing the latest adaptation of The Great Gatsby sparked concern among fans of both the novel and its previous Hollywood adaption.
This concern is the same worry that plagues every film based on a well-loved piece of literature: will it do justice to the book?
I dearly love F. Scott Fitgerald’s original novel, but my life is a little too busy for me to devote too much time to obsessing over book-to-screen fidelity. Less than moved by the trailer; I filed it away in the “will watch, if on Netflix Instant” file part of my mind. Then I saw an article in my RSS feed, and it started a train of thought that I wanted to indulge here.
The article was “New Great Gatsby, On the Road Adaptations Revive an Old Debate: Can Great Books Make Great Movies?” and it used the forthcoming Gatsby and On the Road adaptations as vehicles to discuss whether or not great novels can always be adapted into great movies. The article even pulled out the heavy artillery with a lengthy Stanley Kubrick quote before ultimately pulling its punch and closing with a question instead of a resolution. The question is nonetheless a valid one. Can great books be fairly treated as films?
I have my own favorite Stanley Kubrick quote on this subject: "If it can be written or thought, it can be filmed." However, the point I want to make in this week's major blog is that it isn't simply the quality of the story which determines the ultimate quality of a film--the original format of the story is also a catalytic element for a film's success.
Today, I am making the case that good books never make good films, because only good films are good films. Books can be adapted into screenplays, but the for the film to be judged fairly, it must be judged on its own merits, before its relationship to the source material is taken into account. I contend that it is categorically impossible for any adaptation to be wholly faithful to its source material. Read on.
Making the leap from page to projection.
It does not matter if a book is “great,” or even well-known, because the process of screenwriting requires specific changes to be made in the adaptation of any source material. To establish this, I will offer an extremely well-known series of adaptations as a first example: The Lord of the Rings trilogy, written by J. R. R. Tolkien and adapted for the screen by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and director Peter Jackson.
The original Lord of the Rings novels are extremely detailed. Tolkien went to unprecedented lengths to flesh out the world of his stories, designing entire original languages, histories and geographies. Producers were faced with the two basic choices which must be decided whenever any book is to be adapted:
- Preserve the intricacy of the source material by tasking a group of screenwriters to adapt each novel into a six-hour miniseries.
- Create a less expensive, wider-reaching product by condensing each novel into its own two-hour feature film.
In the case of The Lord of the Rings, it is well known which option the producers took. Detail was undeniably sacrificed in the adaptation process, but consensus among fans is that the films stayed true to the spirit of Tolkien’s novels, even if certain elements were omitted or rearranged for clarity in visual storytelling (more on that later).
The Lord of the Rings was a rare series of adaptations, because the three films not only presented the individual personalities of Tolkien’s many characters, but the themes of the novels remained intact throughout. Themes and characters wage war with each other for audiences' attention, and to that point we will now focus our attention.
Themes vs. Characters
Themes are important.
Without a theme--a “grander purpose” as it were, audiences have no reason to watch characters on a screen. Even films and television shows discussed as “character studies” are only successful as such because of the themes explored in the nature of their characters. In the case of a show like Mad Men, the central character of Don Draper is rarely a likable individual. The omniscient audience is privy to every lie he weaves between his personal and professional lives, and are even given the upper hand through flashbacks that show how Don Draper literally became Don Draper. However, despite being unscrupulous and often very cruel, Draper succeeds as a character, because the writers of Mad Men use him to explore very real issues of man’s search for identity and fulfillment.
Even in films or programs like Mad Men which are categorized as "character studies," the actions of characters, however entertaining, are completely meaningless unless they speak to a finer point, a theme. As one more example, let’s briefly look at Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing.
Do the Right Thing has very few characters who are endearing for their own sake. However, Lee’s characters exist for a reason beyond their own stories. The blacks, Italians, Puerto Ricans and Asians populating Bed-Stuy in Do the Right Thing are not true individuals in the eyes of the screenplay--they are microcosms of entire populations. By writing characters with no significance as individuals, but who expressed the unique rages of entire demographics, Lee's film communicates the realities of modern racism with incredible force.
Strong stories necessitate strong characters, however unlikable they are. However, one cannot expect the same success when the order is reversed.
When a character’s individual significance is given precedence over their place as part of the film as a whole, this is often indicative of a story which lacks a truly compelling theme. If the viewer of a film is led to care more about character more than the story itself, chances are that they are watching a story which is not written to have any real significance.
In continuing our examination of characters and themes, let us look at them in the light of the writing process. It is important to understand the differences between stories written for print and stories written for film.
We will return to the idea of characters versus story in a moment, but before we do we must understand how these stories are written in the first place.
The world of difference between writing for print and writing for cinema.
In a novel or original screenplay, it is perfectly alright for characters to dominate over theme. Different kinds of stories cater to different audiences' tastes. If a film or a novel is only worth attention because it is simple, light entertainment, it is no less a legitimate work of fiction than if it is built on heavily wrought themes which are woven around every challenge of the human experience.
The problems occur when a story written for one medium (print publication) is retrofitted to the storytelling style of another (film).
Writing a story for print is a much freer process than writing for film. A novel can be as short or as long as is necessary to fully tell its story. It can be traditionally structured or spontaneous and associative in the ways in which its story unfolds for the reader. According to the story’s needs, the people, places and things within a story can be drawn in near-infinite detail. Until the story is offered to the mercies of an editor, the novelist reigns as a supreme deity over how his or her story is told. That is the freedom of written fiction.
Contrast this with the process and limitations of screenwriting, and its place in the collaborative business of filmmaking. Screenwriters do not create descriptively-written worlds which readers can interpret mentally; The delivery of a screenplay is not a direct transfer from page to mind, it is moderated by a team of artists and technicians who take it upon themselves to interpret the story and guide the viewer through in the way they deem proper. The screenplay is treated as nothing more than a working template with dialog for the actors.
Furthermore, the stories themselves are constricted in their writing by the confinement of time. No matter how much time passes within the context of a screenplay's story, and no matter how many characters it contains, the screenplay must be written so that its final, visual interpretation will not exceed a running time between ninety minutes and two hours.
Filmmaking is a business, and it must move efficiently to turn a profit. For production teams and actors to digest a story and commit it to film in a timely manner, screenwriters most often reduce the characters’ actions and thoughts to the simplest possible terms. This changes the very language of writing, and is what truly separates screenwriting from novel-writing as a distinct writing style. Consider the following example:
In a story about a hard boiled detective, the novelist might write:
Sam reached into his jacket pocket and took out the cigarette lighter his dad had given him as a kid, just for kicks on a Saturday. ‘Don’t tell your mom,’ dad had said with a grin. Now, the lighter was cold in Sam’s hand, but grew warm as he struck the light and ignited the unfiltered Marlboro between his lips. The lighter was warm, just like the bullet that popped his dad’s heart like a balloon the day after he gave Sam the lighter.
By contrast, screenwriting requires that the same action be expressed much more economically:
Sam takes his lighter out of his pocket and lights a cigarette.
A world of difference, wouldn't you agree?
Novels are hot rods, adaptations are station wagons.
Even though it is obvious that the styles of writing for print and writing for film are markedly different, that does not mean that one is less effective than the other. The problems arise when the infinite nuances of a well-written novel are pared down and re-written to be communicated visually.
A screenwriter faces a weighty problem in adapting a beloved story. There is never, ever enough time in even a two-hour film to include ever detail of a book. And, ultimately, it is the fans of the source material who hold all the cards. They know every twist of the plot, every motivation of the characters, and as a coup d'grace to the screenwriter's difficulties, every reader has seen it differently in his or her own mind.
The hairiness of the situation is made even worse by the ten-figure sums which are spent on major films. The film needs to please the fans, but every fan wants to see their own personal envisioning of the story, because anything else would be, like, totally lame.
This is the fundamental, aphoristic difference between novels and screenplays: novels are written for the theatre of the individual mind, and screenplays are written for mass exhibition via technical processes. Novels are written with a level of detail that literally cannot be expressed through the work of a camera. For a book to work at all as a film, it must be reduced.
Ultimately, most adaptations usually fall into one of the following three categories
- Mechanical movement through many plot points as possible, usually at the expense of emotion and depth of character. (Harry Potter, The Hunger Games)
- Abstract interpretation of theme which leaves the original story barely recognizable. (Apocalypse Now)
- Glorification of the characters over their story. (The Big Sleep, Fight Club)
Casting Judgement
Every adaptation must begin with the screenwriter's painstaking selection of the original story's "structural supports;" most integral parts of a story. Only when these have been established into a workable script can the screenwriter go back and add in as many of the extra details as will fit within the film's running time.
All too often, many of these so desired-for details are still deemed superfluous by studio executives and left out of the theatrical edit, being inserted back into the a "directors cut" at a much later date as "extra character moments for the fans." This, I suppose, is the only consolation some screenwriters will have after the perceived lack of effort on their part has already earned them the ire of their project's original fandom.
After Lord of the Rings, The Hunger Games, Harry Potter, Eragon, Twilight, The Da Vinci Code and innumerable other novels being adapted into films of lesser strength than their original novels, one would assume that book fans would have learned to not expect perfect fidelity from Hollywood; but the old indignant response continues to greet every film.
Coming full circle.
Referencing the Open Culture article from earlier, the question asked was “Can Great Books Make Great Movies?”
At the end of this piece, here is my answer: No book can ever make a good movie. Good movies make good movies.
If a movie is based on a book, book fans need to recognize and fairly acknowledge that novelists write novels, screenwriters write films. When the limitless scope of novel is shoehorned into the limitations imposed by cinematic storytelling, there will be loss in translation.
I love books. I appreciate and respect the time, thought and loving care which good (and even bad) authors impart to their work. Stories always begin with a mind, and even films and music begin in the minds of writers. In a sense, writers are progenitors of every culture.
But that does not diminish the respect which I have for the work done by filmmakers. Good filmmaking is the result of a year of collaboration between writers, directors, performers, artists, designers, caterers and enthusiastic gophers.
When an adapted film judged harshly and angrily criticized simply on the basis of its differences from the source material, book fans make a grave and very unfair mistake: in their rush defend the work of a single author, they fail to realize that what they are really doing is demeaning the honest and hard work of the hundreds of people who took as much as a year out of their lives to bring a book to visual life.
In closing...
Coming back to the subject of The Great Gatsby, I suggest that fans of the original book (like myself) acknowledge here and now that the direction of Baz Lurhmann and the acting style of Leonardo DiCaprio will most likely not capture the full depth and pathos of Jay Gatsby as originally written written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Speaking editorially, I personally believe that Tobey Maguire is dead weight whenever onscreen and will likely not help the film's cause among book fans.
However, Baz Luhrmann’s lush visual style is quite appropriate for presenting the opulence and excess of New England’s upper class during the Roaring Twenties. Leonardo DiCaprio has also become adept at playing brooding characters whom life has left feeling hollow. Between these two elements, it is more than a slightly possibility that the film will fairly present a strong interpretation F. Scott Fitzgerald's theme of a man searching for meaning in a culture which does not value substance as much as it does style.
It is quite possible that I will love Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby as much as I love Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby--I will simply appreciate them in different ways.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Redux
There is nothing quite like a Victorian adventure story. Victorian adventure novels have a unique flavor; detached, yet oddly engaging. Often written in the first person as diary entries or a journalist's notes, they offer a unique perspective on adventure and action in a style that is now coming back into vogue in books like The Hunger Games and World War Z, which seem to be reviving the art of first-person narrative.
In the world of Victorian literature, one name stands apart from the rest. You can talk about H. Rider Haggard or Jules Verne, but Sir Arthur Conan Doyle left the greatest literary legacy of his era in the creation of Sherlock Holmes. I could almost stop with that, because just the name "Sherlock Holmes" carries enough weight and individual associations that my thoughts on the subject are, honestly, entirely superfluous.
Much like I enjoy Doctor Who without feeling the need to identify as a "Whovian," the adventures of Sherlock Holmes occupy a special place in my heart, but I don't call myself a "Sherlockian" or a "Baker Street Irregular." I enjoy good books and good films, and Doyle's stories happen to be some of the best one can ask for in either medium. I have enjoyed the stories since before I was old enough to fully appreciate them. The annotated editions are on the shelf next to me as I write this piece, and through the added maps, background information and photographs, the books inspired me to take a sincere interest in the actual history of London and the life of the man who wrote the stories.
The impact of the character of Sherlock Holmes is indicative of the brilliance of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Harlan Ellison, the great science fiction writer and endlessly entertaining raconteur, went so far as to make the following statement in an interview:
"You want to be smart?...Read the Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes stories. You read the entire canon--there aren't that many--you read the entire canon and you will be smarter than you ever need to be. Because, every one of them is based on the idea of deductive logic. Keep your eyes open and be alert. That's what all good writing says: wake up and pay attention!"
Ellison was right. If you read a Sherlock Holmes story online or on a device, make the text as small as possible and look at it statistically. Most of the stories are made up of questions. Holmes asks questions until the interviewees are out of answers. When he has asked enough questions, he sifts through all of the pertinent facts in his mind and often deduces a correct conclusion without leaving his apartment. Solving a crime was, for him, an intellectual exercises, and one in which he engaged largely for selfish reasons. This fact was made clear in a passage from The Sign of the Four that is most often included in adaptations for its perfect summation of his character.
“My mind," he said, "rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world.”
Holmes is incredibly nuanced and interesting as an individual, but beyond the literary skill required to create good characters, Doyle had to create a believable genius. Holmes couldn't satisfy readers or project brilliance by simply ascribing titles and backstories to the people he observed; he had to be able to explain how he knew what he knew. And that is where Doyle was truly brilliant.
Doyle was able to take simple elements of daily life, from splatters of mud on clothing to a dog's tooth marks on a walking stick and extrapolate correlations and plausible causes from them in his stories. Bear in mind, he wrote for his audience. The distance of time between the original publication and the present day can lull modern readers into a casual acceptance of "that's just what it says," but that is a cheap form of acceptance! Doyle made Holmes impressive because he made perfect sense to his readers in 1887. His stories were authentic because they referred to tools, professions, crimes, international political climates, pets, clothing and customs with which his readers were intimately familiar. And he did it so well that his stories were extremely popular in their day. If they had been outlandish statements that didn't ring true with his readers, such popularity would not have been the case.
Nevertheless, Holmes is still a fictional character. Detractors from the stories will likely remind the reader that many of Holmes deductions never reference any unspoken margin of error, and were furthermore dependent on the strictly defined social customs and not-yet-disproven pseudosciences of the Victorian age. This is exemplified in the following passage from The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, in which Holmes draws conclusions from trace clues found inside a hat. His deductions only work in an era in which phrenology is accepted as science and women were expected to maintain their husbands' accoutrements, but Doyle's level of detail is nonetheless staggering:
“I have no doubt that I am very stupid, but I must confess that I am unable to follow you. For example, how did you deduce that this man was intellectual?”
For answer Holmes clapped the hat upon his head. It came right over the forehead and settled upon the bridge of his nose. “It is a question of cubic capacity,” said he; “a man with so large a brain must have something in it.”
“The decline of his fortunes, then?”
“This hat is three years old. These flat brims curled at the edge came in then. It is a hat of the very best quality. Look at the band of ribbed silk and the excellent lining. If this man could afford to buy so expensive a hat three years ago, and has had no hat since, then he has assuredly gone down in the world.”
“Well, that is clear enough, certainly. But how about the foresight and the moral retrogression?”
Sherlock Holmes laughed. “Here is the foresight,” said he putting his finger upon the little disc and loop of the hat-securer. “They are never sold upon hats. If this man ordered one, it is a sign of a certain amount of foresight, since he went out of his way to take this precaution against the wind. But since we see that he has broken the elastic and has not troubled to replace it, it is obvious that he has less foresight now than formerly, which is a distinct proof of a weakening nature. On the other hand, he has endeavoured to conceal some of these stains upon the felt by daubing them with ink, which is a sign that he has not entirely lost his self-respect.”
“Your reasoning is certainly plausible.”
“The further points, that he is middle-aged, that his hair is grizzled, that it has been recently cut, and that he uses lime-cream, are all to be gathered from a close examination of the lower part of the lining. The lens discloses a large number of hair-ends, clean cut by the scissors of the barber. They all appear to be adhesive, and there is a distinct odour of lime-cream. This dust, you will observe, is not the gritty, grey dust of the street but the fluffy brown dust of the house, showing that it has been hung up indoors most of the time, while the marks of moisture upon the inside are proof positive that the wearer perspired very freely, and could therefore, hardly be in the best of training.”
“But his wife—you said that she had ceased to love him.”
“This hat has not been brushed for weeks. When I see you, my dear Watson, with a week's accumulation of dust upon your hat, and when your wife allows you to go out in such a state, I shall fear that you also have been unfortunate enough to lose your wife's affection.”
“But he might be a bachelor.”
“Nay, he was bringing home the goose as a peace-offering to his wife. Remember the card upon the bird's leg.”
“You have an answer to everything. But how on earth do you deduce that the gas is not laid on in his house?”
“One tallow stain, or even two, might come by chance; but when I see no less than five, I think that there can be little doubt that the individual must be brought into frequent contact with burning tallow—walks upstairs at night probably with his hat in one hand and a guttering candle in the other. Anyhow, he never got tallow-stains from a gas-jet. Are you satisfied?”
“Well, it is very ingenious,” said I, laughing; “but since, as you said just now, there has been no crime committed, and no harm done save the loss of a goose, all this seems to be rather a waste of energy.”
Waste of energy, indeed. But impressive, for both Doyle and Holmes.
As the development of entertainment technology increased by leaps and bounds very soon after the introduction of Sherlock Holmes into popular literature, it is no surprise that Sherlock Holmes started appearing onscreen as early as 1900. It is hard to imagine any literary figure who has been adapted for the screen more times than Sherlock Holmes. At present, Wikipedia lists seventy-three men who have played Holmes on the stage, large and small screens, and radio.
The two actors who have most recently brought Holmes back into the public consciousness, Robert Downey, Jr. and Benedict Cumberbatch, have reintroduced Holmes to the world in unique ways. The interpretations of Doyle's stories have been incredibly unique when compared to previous adaptations, but also surprisingly respectful to Doyle in their respective steampunk and modern-day treatments of the stories.
Looking at it objectively, Guy Ritchie's first film adaptation of Holmes, starring Downey Jr., is much closer to the original material than most critics give it credit for being. In Sherlock Holmes, which I saw with my family on Christmas Day, 2009, draws much of its dialogue verbatim from Doyle's stories. Of course, the story itself is a new narrative for Holmes, one with manifold problems, but a fun story nonetheless. Where it succeeded most, however, was in its interpretation of Holmes himself.
In the stories, Holmes is constantly referred to by others as having skills and abilities which he used when necessary. But, Doyle was careful to structure his stories so that Holmes is never actually seen by Watson when engaged to the fullest extent of his abilities. Holmes is shown to the readers via Watson as action in repose. We only see him when his mind is doing the work, but throughout the short stories and novels, Holmes talked of by others as a superb boxer, a chemist in the tradition of mad scientists, and an accomplished collegiate theatre actor who used his craft professionally to completely assumed new identities while in disguise.
The screenplay of Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes diverged from its source material by showing Holmes fighting and assimilating his disguises. Whereas Watson's point of view, often catching nothing more than the aftermath of a fight or hearing the story of a journey in disguise from Holmes after the fact, is the reader's only glimpse of Holmes in the text, Ritchie's camera follows Holmes when Watson is absent.
Through this shift in viewpoint, we are treated to the Holmes that actually did exist in the text; the difference lies in which side of him we see. Sadly, last year's sequel Game of Shadows, while having moments of brilliance, was very inferior to its predecessor as a film as well as an adaptation what makes Sherlock Holmes the character that he is. When Sherlock Holmes gets too far away from London, he is no longer Holmes, and the most recent film inadvertently turned him into James Bond. I will say, however, that the casting of Jared Harris as Moriarty is a decision for which I will never cease applauding.
Most recently, the BBC has brought an entirely new perspective to the Sherlock Holmes mythos, delivered through the mind of writer and show runner Steven Moffat. More and more, Steven Moffat is styling himself as the Leonardo da Vinci of screenwriting. He possesses a mind with a seemingly endless wellspring of creativity, and a propensity to turn viewers on their ears with plot twists, overlapping timelines and character deaths. In the space of five years, he created and ran the underrated Jekyll, took over the writing of Doctor Who's two most staggeringly complex seasons to date, co-wrote the script for The Adventures of Tintin, only to leave Tintin early to be the guiding hand behind Sherlock.
True to form, Moffat wasted no time in making Sherlock thoroughly unique. He accomplished this by doing something that no one else had done before: he placed Sherlock Holmes and John Watson in modern-day London. Guy Ritchie and Robert Downey Jr. had created a very modern interpretation of Holmes, but they retained him in his original, Victorian environs; the overall effect being one of confinement for the character's personality. By contrast, Moffat's reasons for total commitment to a modern setting were staggeringly obvious:
“We just decided we were going to update him properly; he’d be a modern man because he’s a modern man in the Victorian version, he’s always using newfangled things, like telegrams. He’s someone who appreciates and enjoys technology; he’s a bit of a science boffin, he’s a geek, he would do all those things. I just think it’s fun, I don’t think all the fantastic tech we’ve got limits the storytelling, I think you can use it in all sorts of ways.” [Link]
"Conan Doyle's stories were never about frock coats and gas light; they're about brilliant detection, dreadful villains and blood-curdling crimes - and frankly, to hell with the crinoline. Other detectives have cases, Sherlock Holmes has adventures, and that's what matters." [Link]
As previously stated, staggeringly obvious. These reasons are also in keeping with the spirit of Sherlock Holmes as a character. As the Victorian Holmes was always on the cutting edge of the era's science, publishing articles in print journals on the subject of science in deduction, Moffat's Holmes does exactly the same thing, albeit with newer science and the internet. Moffat even went so far as to placate hardcore fans with some long-awaited catharsis, allowing Sherlock to poke fun at the enduring image of himself as constantly wearing a deerstalker cap. It could even be said that Moffat "lucked out" with the recent British involvement in the War on Terror in Afghanistan, which allowed him to retain even more of John Watson's original character as a wounded veteran fresh from the Afghani desert.
Sherlock Holmes, as Moffat indicated, is an individual who transcends the limitations of a specific time or place. Furthermore, the level of respect which Moffat has shown to Doyle has been deep. Obscure lines of dialogue and camera setups which perfectly mimic Sidney Paget's Strand illustrations make appearances in the BBC series, and are a never-ending source of delight for attentive fans. To Moffat's further credit, he has kept the show confined to London for two seasons, with the exception of the obligatory Baskerville episode, apparently feeling no need superfluously bloat the supposed importance of a case by giving it global or supernatural import.
The idea of Holmes as an eternally modern man is also why I can defend the Guy Ritchie adaptations, albeit to a lesser extent. Culture evolves. As Stephen Fry said, "Evolution is all about restless and continuous change, mutation and variation." The more time that passes between the present day and that moment in 1886 when Doyle first put pen to paper and wrote Holmes into existence in A Study in Scarlet, the more necessary it becomes to update the adaptations to appeal to the very different culture that might be seeing it for the first time.
Provided that the Doyle estate protects Sir Arthur's stories from being tampered with or expanded by new writers (such as the recent continuation of the late Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne novels under the authorship of Eric von Lustbader), so that future generations may continue to experience the stories as they were written, not just as stories, but as a reflection of Victorian culture, and a stellar example of the period's style of writing.
The Ritchie/Downey films have reached the widest audience thus far in recent years, and they have their flaws. However, they retain enough of the character's essence to make people want to read the books. I am personally unprepared to admit that the BBC's Sherlock has any flaws, but I will concede that they are unconventional in their unabashed commitment to Holmes as a modern man.
Where too many literary fans of Doyle and Holmes make a mistake, (and this holds equally true for fans of all book franchises which have been adapted for the screen), is in confusing the quality of a film or television show with the fidelity of the adaptation from its source. Simply being different from the source material does not automatically make a film "bad" in any objective sense of screenwriting or production quality.
The root cause of many adaptations being popularly labeled as "bad," is that good books have the tendency to become the equivalent of good friends to devoted readers, and any deviation from what fans already know and love consequently feels like a very personal slight. The more popular the book, the better the odds are that subjective fan opinions will color popular opinion far more than objective reviews which weigh the adaptation on its own merit.
However, there is one point on which I believe that all fans of Doyle's stories can agree. If either of the two (soon to be three) franchises currently celebrating the writing of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle inspire their audiences to seek out the source material and discover the brilliance of Doyle's work on their own, then the adaptations, no matter how disagreeable to some fans, have succeeded. And I think we can all be happy about that.