A question formed in my mind while I recently read the script for “The Princess Bride.”
Would some of the most renowned novelists of the past have written for and/or directed movies had they existed? Or would that have fallen in the lap of the playwrights?
This came up because, as I read the script, I wanted to skip over the brief descriptive passages to get to the dialogue. The imagery already ingrained in my brain from several past viewings, I saw the narrative as a hindrance to my enjoyment of the movie’s witty verbal exchanges. (Had it been the actual script rather than a transcript of the film, I would have enjoyed it on a completely different level.)
Those details, however, are vital to a novelist. While some things can be left to the reader’s imagination, there are other times that details are important to the story, and without prior knowledge of a place, the reader needs the author’s painstakingly specific depiction. In today’s culture of instant worldwide communication, it’s harder to reach a reader who has no preconceived notions of a setting.
We also should remember that some of the most well-known authors were published in literary magazines that paid by the word. Excess description and flowery adjectives helped line the struggling artists’ pockets.
With a moving picture to assist them, however, would the literary greats have gone to such great lengths holed up in their writing cubbies, or would they have concentrated on the dialogue and a few simple settings? Would Charles Dickens have scratched out his ideas for “A Christmas Carol” on a pub napkin and let a filmmaker do the rest?
I shudder to think that Great Expectations might never have existed in novel form. In it Dickens seems to be working from a palette most modern writers don’t even know exists. Then again, maybe I just haven’t read enough “real” literature.
Much of the shift of eyeballs from the printed word to the screen, whether to read or to watch, is thanks to technology much newer than film.
Perhaps writers of classic novels thrust into today’s world still would toil over the niggling details, yet publish them online. Certainly this would be the perfect model for those wishing to get read, not get rich. I know an online novelist who says he would make movies if he had the budget, but since blogging is so cheap he uses that medium to foist his considerable talents upon the world.
As increasingly portable devices make it easier for us to be viewers rather than readers, will our appreciation for expertly crafted narrative give way to cinematography that looks good on a 4-inch screen? I have given in to this more than a few times over my lunch hour, propping my PocketDish up against my insulated lunch pail rather than reading a book. On trips, it is not unusual for me to read a book only until the flight attendant says it’s okay to turn on “approved electronic devices.”
I tell myself that I do it because, with a wife who is a fan of neither horror nor unflinching independent films, I get less time at home to watch whatever I want. In reality, however, I grew up a TV viewer and movie lover, reading only when neither of those was convenient.
In recent years I find I’m usually happier writing than reading or viewing, and so at that same lunch table I often can be found tapping at these keys.
At the rate technology is progressing, watching a screen anywhere will be convenient, and the restroom will no longer be nicknamed “the library.” Devices like the Amazon Kindle, however, are using technology to keep “print” alive. Perhaps if it and related products become as ubiquitous as the iPod, reading will not be completely replaced by viewing.
In the end, I suppose that writers plucked from the past and dropped into present day would tailor their craft toward whatever medium allowed them to avoid working a regular job.
When deciding between reading or viewing I just can’t let myself forget that very few things I have watched have been as engrossing, entertaining, and thought-provoking as a good book. I have to make myself believe it, because my ultimate goal is to write one.
