After all that, I couldn't even pick the winner correctly. Patrick DeWitt's THE SISTERS BROTHERS wins the 2012 Tournament of Books as a Zombie pick (the other one was THE ART OF FIELDING) over Teju Cole's OPEN CITY. Put it on your lists!

Filmbook: "The Hunger Games" (2012)

Who's excited about going to the movies to watch a bunch of teenagers try to kill each other? Only all of America; "The Hunger Games" opened last weekend as the third-highest grossing movie of all time, beating all four TWILIGHT movies so far (though still not touching "The Dark Knight"'s record). It's refreshing and slightly disturbing how much audiences (and readers before them) have taken to this dystopian vision.

There is plenty of violence in Gary Ross' adaptation of THE HUNGER GAMES, although to maintain a PG-13 it's often presented in choppy, shaky motion. Still, bodies are dropping and our heroine Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence), the competitor from a Dorothea Lange photograph of a city whom no one expects to survive, sustains some extremely squishy looking wounds in the Games. Ross amps up the "Truman Show" aspect of the original story (say, that movie meets the short story "The Most Dangerous Game") with a fair amount of focus on the diabolical creators of the Games, who throw everything in Katniss' way (or do they?) But a person might find herself wishing that the carnage would hurry up and start.

I don't think this was a purposeful stall, although that would have been clever. I shouldn't have been surprised that "Seabiscuit" Ross' adaptation clocks in at well over two hours, and I'm not opposed to long movies as a rule. But there are times when this movie is not moving anywhere, dwelling on the intimate exchanges and feelings leading up to the Games that don't serve its format. I went to this movie to see fighting, and the magnificent totalitarian architecture (and loopy fashions) of the Capitol! I didn't go to this movie to look at Wes Bentley's beard (although I am strongly considering calling my next band Wes Bentley's Beard) as, playing the Games head designer Seneca, he impenetrably ponders the advice of President Snow (Donald Sutherland, a little toothless) on how to advance this game.

The exception to the waste inherent in this short game is any material involving Lawrence, who could probably do anything after turning in this performance (as predicted). Her ability to naturally depict the loneliness, shock, fear, determination and boredom inherent in her position (who knew waiting for death was a lot like other waiting?) as fluid states changing from moment to moment makes a sometimes-unlikeable character someone to root for. Sometimes she looks like a tough woman, and sometimes like a little girl; she maintains that only she can take care of her sister Prim through winning, despite the support of her mother and her friend Gale (Liam Hemsworth, whose presence here is mainly to bookmark for future installments) but falls into pieces after being separated from her fellow gamesman Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) for only a few minutes. It's remarkable that I watched Lawrence for over two hours and never thought of her badass role from last year as Mystique in "X-Men: First Class," a character who shares certain adolescent dualities and secret strengths with Katniss. (Beyond that, the other real standout I could have watched for so long was Stanley Tucci as Caesar, the Hunger Games "host" doing a sort of psychotic David Letterman with a Mozart pompadour. I'm hoping for a DVD extra consisting of him narrating random things for 2 hours. I'd watch that.)

I'm not such an ardent fan of the trilogy that I came in ready to spot the differences -- enough people can do that -- but two major changes struck me as less than wise (spoilers): First, the movie scraps the book's ending (terrific) to borrow some scenes belonging to its successor CATCHING FIRE, allowing more closure and less climax. This is pure dumb Hollywood at work; didn't "Inception" prove audiences can handle a little cliffhanger with their endings? The scene they should have stopped on is visually so striking, that everything else can only subtract from that. (The Cornucopia, right?) I alluded to the other change earlier: While the entire book takes place from Katniss' perspective, the adaptations includes scenes from Seneca's perspective as well as random interspersed shots of the gamemakers' terminals as they (apparently?) watch the screen instead of doing their jobs, and there was a more effective way of incorporating all those things.

I didn't enjoy this movie as much as the book, but that's okay. I'm still in for the series unless they failed to sign Lawrence for all four movies (which would be mighty foolish).

Filmbook verdict: Read the book, then see the movie if you liked it.

Fear and Possessiveness in BLUE NIGHTS

If there is an attractive side to grief, it is not shown in Joan Didion's latest memoir about losing her daughter Quintana. Even its sweet moments are tinged with a kind of desperation, as if reporting them is a show of the living. Didion repeats like a mantra something her daughter once said to her -- "Like when someone dies, don't dwell on it" -- but she can't follow that directive. She doesn't sound depressed so much as haunted, and ritualizing everything in order to ward off the haunting.

Losing her only daughter provokes two impulses in Didion: the fear of gradually losing Quintana's memory and of gradually deteriorating and dying herself, and the instinct to clutch tight to whatever she has of her daughter -- even the out-of-context quote above -- at the cost of practically bringing herself to a standstill. There is no moving on, in fact there's hardly any moving. Everything she does, she does by rote. In the middle of this stage of grief the adaptation of "The Year Of Magical Thinking" opens on Broadway and Didion takes to eating takeout backstage every night from the same restaurant. If we still talked about records stuck in grooves... It's as if this rite could reverse the past, which of course, is impossible. Not to say that ritual doesn't have a part in grief -- but BLUE NIGHTS shows the captivating danger in them.

The issue of Quintana's adoption is not fully connected to the present and her death but creates an interesting tension related to these points. Quintana's death seems to underline something in Didion about the impermanence of the arrangement that delivered baby Q into her and her husband's arms, a much-wanted only child whose later medical problems, whatever they were,  seem unrelated to her upbringing. (A certain Atlantic writer used the tales of Quintana's childhood escapades to indict Didion and husband John Gregory Dunne for being inattentive parents, but the case is inconclusive based on evidence provided.) Perhaps it's just the severing of the last tie between mother and non-biological child that causes Didion to wonder how much of herself she ever reflected in her daughter.

BLUE NIGHTS reveals little about the relationship between Didion and Quintana, in fact may make it even more impenetrable than before, but expertly maps the landscape of finding oneself among the living after a death. The brittleness of Didion's sentences maps back to her sense of her own fragility, highlighted by the mortality of others. Not dwelling on it, after all, is impossible.

"An Open Letter To My Sister, Angela Y. Davis" by James Baldwin: First in a series of "pieces of literature I found by the printer at the office." (Literature as opposed to emails, of which there are too many. Paperless office, am I right?)

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

--from "Diving Into The Wreck" by Adrienne Rich, who died today; she was 82.

After 29 years, Tennessee Williams' final play "In Masks Outrageous And Austere" (catchy, right?) will finally get a world premiere in New York this spring. Yesterday would have been Williams' 101st birthday.

One-Star Revue: THE MARRIAGE PLOT (was robbed!)

The Tournament of Books has not been going the way that I would like it to go. OPEN CITY's upset of THE MARRIAGE PLOT is a travesty and I can only see it as a rebellion against an accepted master to anoint a self-consciously "edgy" book featuring an "outsider" protagonist who is at his best when recording impressions outside himself because he has no apparent human feelings. Its difference works against it in the moment where the protagonist stops acting like a human and the novel essentially lets him get away with a crime, focusing instead on the thoughts that precede from him whose coldness is shocking. In that moment Julius is revealed to be a symbol instead of a man, and it feels like a betrayal.

Perhaps judge Alex Abramovich, who called THE MARRIAGE PLOT "grade-grubbing" and said it "does the work of making you feel smart, without having to have worked for it," might agree with some of these other people:

• "If you are completely cerebral and angst-ridden and enjoy reading about others just like you, then this book is for you!" Okay, this one made me laugh. 
• "I was annoyed that Eugenides throws in lots of literary references."
• "There is not a single character that would not benefit by getting an actual life."
• "Eugenides' desperation for 'intellectual' or 'creative' metaphors and similes seeps through the pages like a fat nerd boy sweating out his nervousness onto his World of Warcraft T-shirt while standing around thinking of how to impress a girl." 
• "Perhaps, holding the book and feeling the pages might expunge my first impression--but I doubt it." What?
• "I found the characters unheroic."
• "The ending of the book was pretty cliche and made me feel that I have just run a fun circle of marathon and am still standing at the exact same spot." 
• "When my book club chose this, I wasn't thrilled."
• "Before I begin, let me clarify that I am a Doctoral student in Comparative Literature." Sorry, no resumes on Amazon please.

It's a special day

I will have to take 2 hours off my reading today because "Mad Men" returns tonight! Don Draper, get on my television!

Source: Belle's Bookshelf

Gwyneth Paltrow, mean girl author

There was an article in the New York Times last week about cookbook ghostwriters -- people who specialize in helping chefs, who are busy and maybe not the most eloquent in writing, refine their recipes and collect them into books. The article quoted a writer I had never heard of named Julia Turshen, who has worked with actress and self-proclaimed lifestyle guru Gwyneth Paltrow on some of her books and was described as "collaborating" and "writing with" Paltrow on her book MY FATHER'S DAUGHTER.

Apparently that was more credit than Paltrow was willing to give. She took to her newsletter, GOOP, to "defend" herself:

(Note: I inexplicably subscribe to but almost never read this newsletter.)

After the Times refused to print a correction, Paltrow also went on "Rachael Ray" to clarify that Turshen was her "assistant" and, "I wrote my book and it's all mine."

Okay, so maybe "ghostwriting" is not the exact term that Paltrow would use. But this is starting to reek like when Hollywood actresses (ahem) talk about themselves as "working mothers" and deny having childcare. (Impressive counter-example: Poehler, 2011.) I prefer the estimation of Sari Botton, who has worked as a ghostwriter (and isn't afraid to say it!):

So maybe Gwyneth uttered or typed every one of the words in her cook book. But I doubt strongly she put it all together without a great deal of Turshen’s help. No, fuck “help.” I doubt she did it without Turshen’s hard work.

Why is it so hard to admit that you have help? Every author has help. Some just pay more for it. Whatever the hell else Paltrow does with all her free time (I have no idea) she'd like us to think she sweated blood and tears over every single recipe in her books. But she probably had photographers to take the pictures -- and someone to get the groceries for the foods featured in the pictures -- and even if she hadn't worked with Turshen someone would have edited her writing, likely for content and mechanics. That is what editors do! And even if you don't have Paltrow-Martin levels of money, you could hire a freelance editor to help you with your manuscript, or just to get a fresh pair of eyes on the thing. And if you don't have any money, you could ask your friends to read it (this is my plan). Or your professors if you're in college or graduate school. Or your parents. Or your cat?

Getting into an unprofessional snit about it just makes her look, shall we say, less involved in her cookbooks than I might otherwise have guessed. (Or bad at non-disclosure agreements... take your pick.)

Were you wondering what George R.R. Martin thinks about the Tebow trade?

Wonder no further. Sincerely, never would have guessed he was a Jets fan.

Breaking: Books popular again

Frank Costa and Derek Hedbany, 18-year-old freshman roommates at New York University, were subsisting on adrenaline and Red Bull. Mr. Hedbany said the [HUNGER GAMES trilogy] featured a lot of action, and Mr. Costa said he liked the pacing and vivid imagery. "It's not a happy ending," he said. "It's supposed to be a teen novel, but I think it's a clever metaphor for today's society."

--I have done a lot of crazy things for books, but camping out on a Manhattan street overnight is not one of them.

"Read so hard, libraries gonna fine me"

I don't want to suggest that the worldwide overlap between Jay-Z and Kanye West appreciators and bookbound nerds is all that small, although among this readership I suspect it is. But in the off chance you had a day as terrible as mine and you maybe feel like the world is going to end... this ought to help. It must be really hard to be Katy Perry right now.

"Bitches in Bookshops," by Annabelle Quezada and La Shea Delaney, 2012.

Tournament of Books '12 Round 2 Picks

First, it's a good thing I don't have any money on this as you can see from my incorrect picks (in red).

Second, I'm crushed that OPEN CITY won yesterday. I finished this book over the weekend and, not to get into it, but I regretted running up the library fines to finish it. I guess this is how all you Duke fans feel?

Third, I made some new picks because I don't learn:

Now who do you think will be the zombies?!?!?!?!?!

Breaking: Movies are no longer stupid, says well-known author

HBO has purchased a documentary about birds in which author Jonathan Franzen makes an appearance.

On EUGENE ONEGIN at least we are agreed

It is regrettable that Russian re-President Vladimir Putin did not announce his plan for a Russian canon of literature that will be required of high school dropouts by shooting a new series of beefcake photos of himself straddling a library desk or lifting stacks of Tolstoy and Chekhov.