The Grapes of Wrath, the movie

Here is a film that is generally true to the text, especially in the first half of the action, but there were a couple key differences that will make fans of the novel gasp. There was no devastating flood at the end, for example, and since it was the forties, no breastfeeding of emaciated old men in barns. The ‘second-half’ sequence of events was reshuffled slightly so that the book’s happy interlude of life in the government camp was bumped to the end of the movie- to manufacture a happy ending where Steinbeck provided none.

But there are certain touching scenes that are right out of Steinbeck’s masterpiece: the kindly truckers in a Route 66 roadside diner, who leave huge tips to compensate the owners for their own kindness to the Joads, the kids’ wonder at the flushing toilets in the government camp, and the handwritten note stuffed in a jar next to the grandfather’s hastily buried body, just to name a few. The casting and acting is first-rate (except maybe for the sideshow character of Casy, who comes off as a village idiot.) In short, there’s a lot to love for Steinbeck nation.

In fact, if you thought the book was too dark and overly political, you’ll probably love the film- it’s a classic. But if you’re a literary adaptation purist, some of the changes may not sit well with you obviously. It is a gorgeous film, however, and it’s worth checking out if only to see Jane Darwell’s Oscar-winning performance as Ma Joad. (Henry Fonda is no slouch as Tom, and John Ford also took home the Oscar for best Director.) Give it a watch.

At the Movies

Oscar week is upon us, and I’ll try to review some classic literary adaptations as the days go  by. In the meantime, here’s a look at some of our other “film-inspired” posts:

• You’ve heard of movies based on books, but what about movies based on poems?
• Or how about some screenplays that came before the book?
• There’s the time William Faulkner rewrote a work of Ernest Hemingway.
• Here’s our look at Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris.”
• And our review of HBO’s “Hemingway and Gellhorn.”
• There’s this clip of Proustian Memory from Pixar.
• A hollow literary adaptation is reviewed here.
• A Raymond Carver Short Story takes a turn on the big screen.
• And of course, the bookish winner of Best Animated Short from last year.

Ghosts of the living

"There is something memorable in the experience to be had by going into a fair ground that stands at the edge of a Middle Western town on a night after the annual fair has been held. The sensation is one never to be forgotten. On all sides are ghosts, not of the dead, but of living people. Here, during the day just passed, have come the people pouring in from the  town and the country around. Farmers with their wives and children and all the people from the hundreds of little frame houses have gathered within these board walls. Young girls have laughed and men with beards have talked of the affairs of their lives. The place has been filled to overflowing with life. It has itched and squirmed with life and now it is night and the life has all gone away. The silence is almost terrifying." 

-from Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson

Review: Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson

I should say up front that Winesburg, Ohio  was not a book that I was just dying to read. We’ve dealt with Sherwood Anderson’s influence here and here, and it was his influence on writers I have loved, more than anything else, that prompted me to check out his most famous book.

So what kind of book is it? Not a novel, that’s for sure. Not even a short story collection in the strictest sense- though each of the stories could technically stand on their own. It’s actually a short story cycle, where a number of stories work together like a mosaic to fill in a picture larger than themselves.

The common theme tying them all together seems to be the notion that meaningful connections with other people, even in a place as small as Winesburg, are a deceptive mirage you can never quite get to. A number of the stories focus on near -connections, typically occurring on long walks about the town (there is a bar in Winesburg, but not much else in the way of entertainment), but ultimately the characters are disappointed to find themselves bereft of the friendship and understanding that they so desperately craved. If I were to sum up the plight of Anderson’s characters in one word, I would say that they yearn .

Inserting obligatory "Yearning" link here.

Now, there are  some repeating characters we get to know a little better than others, especially the character of young George Willard, who serves as a kind of sounding board for the lost souls of his town, and whose decision to leave Winesburg in the last story gives the book its ending. But no matter the length, each story is a kind of simple character sketch, or a study in backstory- almost like a writing exercise. I was impressed with the eloquent way in which he puts their inner lives on display for the reader, as in this quick but precise description:

“In the big empty office the man and the woman sat looking at each other and they were a good deal alike. Their bodies were different, as were also the color of their eyes, the length of their noses, and the circumstances of their existence, but something inside them meant the same thing, wanted the same release, would have left the same impression on the memory of an onlooker.”

Each character’s got a history, and each finds himself in a dilemma, but there aren’t many happy resolutions or neatly tied-up endings. Every story simply adds another tile to the mosaic, which I why I would say that, in the end, the main character is probably Winesburg itself.

It’s worth checking out, as a “founding document” of modern American fiction, if nothing else.

Review: Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner

You may have already noticed, but I’m a big fan of Leaving the Atocha Station . In fact, I haven’t been this excited about a book in quite a long time. What is it about the novel that appeals to me? I’m not sure I know. But I’ll take a crack at it.

• First off, I’m a big sucker for expat stories: American poetry fellow abroad in Spain?- check.
• I love meta fiction, in particular books about writers writing (or struggling to write): a main character who fears (knows?) his hackneyed rip-off poetry makes him a literary imposter? – check.
• I love beautiful, witty writing- check and check.
• And I have a huge soft spot for loveable losers- in this case a main character, Adam Gordon, who is in some ways so supremely self-confident, yet plagued by doubts and miscues at every turn- check.

This last factor is, I think, what makes the story work so well. Adam is, for all intents and purposes, a hash-smoking doofus who finds himself in over his head. He’s an intelligent doofus, but he’s a doofus. He coasts by in spite of half-understood exchanges with the Spanish locals. He lies compulsively, as when he tells people his mother is dead, or that his father is a fascist, then flashes to a mental image of his dad, “gentlest of men,” coaxing a spider onto a piece of paper so he can carry the lost creature outside the house to safety. He sabotages relationships and seems set on submarining his own fellowship. His entire purpose in Spain is to research the Spanish Civil War and produce an epic poem on the topic, yet when the Madrid train bombings take place right in front of his eyes, he is oblivious to history:

"I leaned my head against the wheel and felt the full force of my shame. I wasn’t capable of fetching coffee in this country, let alone understanding its civil war. I hadn’t even seen the Alhambra. I was a violent, bipolar, compulsive liar. I was a real American… I was a pothead, maybe an alcoholic. When history came alive, I was sleeping at the Ritz."

But miraculously, things work out for our flawed hero. He stumbles into meaningful friendships completely by accident. His anti-social screw-ups are accepted as the eccentricities of a creative genius. The two or three lines he memorizes for a panel discussion on current events magically fall into place as the most insightful comments of the night.

"They wanted the input of a young American poet writing and reading abroad and wasn’t that what I was, not just what I was pretending to be? Maybe only my fraudulence was fraudulent."

I have to be honest, I thought the story was headed for a depressing, turd-in-the-punchbowl ending- a suicide, or an epic academic flameout that would ruin Adam’s career, but I couldn’t have been more pleasantly surprised. Things are left ambiguous, to be sure, but the trajectory is enough to imply a happy ending.

It is an entertaining, thought-provoking, and ultimately uplifting read. Highly, highly recommended.

From the Pen of Ben Lerner

It’s been a while since I finished Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station , but that doesn’t mean I’m through with it yet. I flipped back through it looking at some of the highlights I’d made along the way, and realized it’s hard to convey just how hilarious this book is based on a mere passage or two. But here’s one example that gives you a sense for the main character’s Byzantine self-awareness and his amusing disdain for those around him:

"I opened my eyes a little more widely than normal, opened them to a very specific point, raising my eyebrows and also allowing my mouth to curl up in the implication of a smile. I held this look steady once it had obtained, a look that communicated incredulity cut with familiarity, a boredom arrested only by a vaguely anthropological interest in my surroundings, a look that contained a dose of contempt I hoped could be read as political, as insinuating that, after a frivolous night, I would be returning to the front lines of some struggle that would render whatever I experienced in such company null. The goal of this look was to make my insufficiencies appear chosen, to give my unstylish hair and clothes the force of protest; I was a figure for the outside to this life, I had known it and rejected it and now was back as an ambassador from a reality more immediate and just.

"There ensued a battle between the music and my face."

But even when he’s not being funny, he shows a poet’s flare for injecting his lines and paragraphs with phrases that bring the whole thing to life like so many lighted fuses:

"While I thought of myself as superior to all the carousal I was in fact desperate for some form of participation both because I was terribly bored at night and because I was undeniably attracted to the air’s vulgar libidinal charge."

"While I had never thought I was in love with Teresa, whatever that might mean, I had on more than one occasion thought that she was maybe a little in love with me. And if we never slept together or otherwise “realized” our relationship, I would leave Spain with this gorgeous possibility intact, and in my memory could always ponder the relationship I might have had in the flattering light of the subjunctive."

"My mind was revising many months’ worth of assumptions; I felt something like a physical change as my recent past liquefied and reformed. What was left of the light burnished what it touched; Isabel was half shadow and half bronze, boundless and bounded."

"Teresa made a joke and they laughed and the many-headed laughter was terrible to me."

"Elena Lopez Portillo had ceased to speak and I could feel a change in pressure on my face, the effect of the audience focusing its eyes upon me." 

Good stuff, right? I’ll review the whole thing tomorrow.

Find your way to Oz

Okay, if you’re a fan of L. Frank Baum, or a user of Google’s Chrome browser, you may get a kick out of this cool site to promote Disney’s upcoming movie “Oz the Great and Powerful.” It’s basically an HTML5 video game, where you can wander around a travelling circus, explore various tents, take a hot-air balloon ride and, if you get too close to the twister, maybe even find yourself transported to the land of Oz.

Chrome users, go here.

For those of you with some other browser, here is a quick preview to give you a flavor for what you’re missing:

Another Month in the Can

We only covered about 20 different authors this month, but since we only post about twenty times in a month, that’s not too shabby- especially considering the huge, heaping helpings of Heller we heaved upon you. Here are the top 5 posts from the past thirty days:

• Slovene Literature, Geopolitics and Video Games, oh my!
• First Line Friday: Stage Directions
• Title Chase: Catch-22
• What Bugs Me Wednesday: The War on Style
• Le Mot Juste- Without a Thesaurus

And here, as usual, are some of the nutty search terms that led people to us:

“Death in Wuthering Heights”  >>  Well, we’ve done death of  Wuthering Heights

“Death in Brave New World”  >>  Um, we killed that one off, too

“Bosch garden of earthly delights”  >>  Enjoy a profound experience of art

“Man playing video games”  >>  We’ve done exactly three posts on video games.

“Sgt. Pepper’s Album”  >>  Why yes, of course we’ve covered that.

“Beast of Burden poem”  >>  I really hope the reader got something out of this parody poem

“edith newbold jones Wharton”  >>  Ah yes, our keeping up with the Joneses post.

“8-bit ham”  >>  How about the 8-bit Fitzgerald?

“Fiction town map coloring page” >>  Well, I guess you could use this for that.

“Modern library”  >>  The famous list that we sliced and diced here.

Thanks for visiting. Keep coming back!

Happy Friday!

Review: Catch-22, by Joseph Heller

I remember reading sections of Catch-22  in highschool English, but I hadn’t gone back to read the whole thing until a week or two ago. It’s a book that comes in at #7 on the Modern Library’s list of 100 greatest novels, and whether or not you agree with that ranking, I think it’s safe to say that it belongs on the list. I mentioned this yesterday, but I think Heller gets unfairly pidgeonholed as a whacky satirist rather than as a top-notch writer or a storyteller.

Still, there’s no denying the man has a knack for humor. Take the prosaic progression and punchline in this line, for example:

"There was a urologist for his urine, a lymphologist for his lymph, an endocrinologist for his endocrines, a psychologist for his psyche, a dermatologist for his derma, there was a pathologist for his pathos, a cystologist for his cysts, and a bald and pedantic Cetologist from the zoology department at Harvard, who had been shanghaied ruthlessly into the medical corps by a faulty anode in an IBM machine and spent his sessions with the dying colonel trying to discuss Moby Dick with him."

The absurdity of a poor cetologist landing in the medical corps near the frontlines of WWII is typical of the crazy conundrums that fill the novel- from Milo Minderbinder’s syndicate (Everybody’s got a share!) to the political maneuvers of the dastardly military brass.

There were  a couple spots where the attempt at humor gets to be a little much, where the dialogue starts to resemble an old Abbott & Costello or Groucho Marx routine, where every line is a punchline, but by and large the satire is hilarious and effective.

And here’s what I really loved about the book. The chapters present a disjointed and non-chronological timeline where past events are referred to, then placed like puzzle pieces into greater context, and finally dealt with in-depth later on in the narrative- some of it a pretty gruesome counterpoint to the funny material that surrounds it. It all has the effect of throwing the reader into the same confusing and seemingly endless loop that the characters themselves are stuck in- with one key exception: the ever-climbing number of combat missions the men are required to fly. This last fact provides a common thread for the entire book, and gives an ominous crescendo to the unfolding action. It’s brilliant how it all comes together.