One-Star Revue: WILD

One of the less-megaphoned, but (to me) major slights of last week's Oscar nominations was the Academy voters not giving "Wild" the nod for Best Adapted Screenplay. The Nick Hornby-penned (yup, that Nick Hornby) adaptation of Cheryl Strayed's memoir about the time she hiked the Pacific Crest Trail and changed her life is the rare film that can be appreciated in tandem with its source material. Director Jean-Marc Vallee took full advantage of the visual medium of film to show us the weird and lonely places on the trail where Strayed wrestled with her demons, while employing voiceover to retain the author's voice in her own story. Watching "Wild" made me want to go back and read WILD, and can you wish for more from a movie adaptation? (See also "Inherent Vice.")

WILD has been out for a while, though, and not everyone feels the same way I do. A particular flashpoint for these reviewers is the popularity of the book after its selection for "Oprah's Book Club 2.0" (is this still happening? I forget!) Normally I disdain the explanation that anyone who dislikes a popular thing is "just jealous," but in a few cases here, it's a close call. I can only think that these people are just missing out on something:

• "This book is just further proof that it is sex, drugs & rock 'n' roll that sells. If it had ACTUALLY been about the PCT, Oprah never would have read it."
• "I've been through a number of similar traumas to Strayed. What I didn't do to recover was libel my entire immediate family... or wallow in self-pity for YEARS."
• "The parts about the hike I did read were good, but I just kept waiting for something to gross me out or make me sad and then decided it wasn't worth it."
• "There was not enough hiking and true self discovery for me to take this book seriously."
• "Nearly everyone gets blisters on these long-distance hikes - but complaining about them incessantly is obnoxious."
• "Strayed includes a list titled "Books Burned on the PCT" - not "Books Read on the PCT"... It's almost as if she's proud of having consigned Faulkner, Nabokov, and Joyce to the flames. So casually does Strayed admit to destroying so much that is beautiful, I'm shocked she actually managed to hike over a thousand miles without starting a forest fire."
• "I'll admit it right off the bat, I'm not sure this genre is my cup of tea."

P.S. Just for argument's sake, I'd probably bump "The Imitation Game" from its adapted screenplay spot. Such a traditional (boring) biopic for such an extraordinary story. How frustrating.

Nick Hornby: "I believe in reading until you find the book that speaks to you"

On Thursday I went to see author, Oscar nominee and Believer columnist Nick Hornby speak at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan. Hornby has a shaved head and the kind of unplaceable English accent that would be described by the typical American as "Well, it's not Michael Caine, but..." He was introduced and later interviewed by Believer editor Vendela Vida, who has luminous skin and delivered a hilarious deadpan address casting all of Hornby's accomplishments as annoying side jobs from his central focus on "Stuff I've Been Reading."

The program was billed as a "First Reads" event in which Hornby would read a book assigned to him (by... someone) that he had never read before and then give a talk on it. I felt a little let down upon finding out in the room that the book was going to be MRS. DALLOWAY, but I shouldn't have; Hornby delivered a fascinating talk on how his rebellion against formal literature study (starting from the moment when he decided not to read "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight") and the unsympathetic view of a biography he skimmed for a contest caused him to neglect Woolf entirely until this assignment. Hornby joked that he was surprised that so many people turned up to hear someone talking about something he knew so little about, but "that's America for you." 

Hornby contrasted Woolf's occasional patronizations with Dickens, who is now equally beloved in scholarship but whose novels were rarely reviewed in his own time. There's a moment in MRS. DALLOWAY where a man is described as "nondescript," which he sees as Woolf's opinion in a nutshell: that some people are just not worth the narrative space -- again, not an attitude Dickens would have shared. But he praised Woolf's beautiful structure and the way the consciousness of MRS. DALLOWAY flows from subject to subject.

The Believer column whose fourth collection MORE BATHS, LESS TALKING has definitely shaped Hornby's own reading tastes, beyond his occasionally picking shorter books to read (he admitted, guiltily). He said he feels less pressure now about reading the latest prizewinner just to have an opinion on it, but instead chooses to focus on "books I think I would get something out of." He also acknowledged (without naming names) that some books' faults are the faults of the reader, for not giving them proper attention. Hornby also spoke briefly about his current adaptation projects, Colm Toibin's BROOKLYN and Cheryl Strayed's WILD (I know, right??) as well as his struggles adapting to an e-reader, which he said he can only use while traveling for convenience's sake.

How to resist subscribing to The Believer now?

Not only did the Believer bring Nick Hornby back, they also added Daniel Handler reading one Nobel Laureate's book a month? ... I've been really, really good this year... and I had a day of woe yesterday... so tempting. (Great idea of Handler's by the way.)

Filmbook: "One Day" (2011, dir. Lone Scherfig)

In case you haven't been pressed to read it yet, David Nicholls' 2009 novel follows the relationship of Emma and Dexter, college classmates who have a fling the night of graduation and then stay in touch over the next 20 years, through bad jobs (mostly hers), flashes of fame (mostly his), lovers, moves and deaths. Each year receives a chapter in the book, which allows Scherfig in the film adaptation to play at onscreen supertitles that bounce and float over each year's new scene, with Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess as the friends, etcetera who you watch slowly growing old.

The character of Dexter is extremely effective because he represents the fusion of two types of people that hang around in people's lives, both of which happen to be popular archetypes in romantic storylines: He's the friend who you've known for so long you can say the same things over and over to each other and have the conversation still be meaningful, and he's the friend on whose account you always wonder, "What if?" Taken together this is an extremely potent arrangement. Unfortunately as written by Nicholls he's also a selfish manchild, the kind Nick Hornby characters are often accused of being (slash are, if you don't like Nick Hornby I guess).

That Dexter and Emma stayed in touch thereafter seems like a minor miracle from the vantage of this technologically cozy age. In the book I thought it was made clearer, although the movie only winks at it, that Emma is doing most of the heavy lifting there, an observation for which I either want to pat Nicholls on the back or kick his ass because of the problematic wish-fulfillment this sets up for the man and woman in the novel... but I digress.

Dexter has been niced up some for Lone Scherfig's adaptation (with Nicholls' screenplay, so it's not like he wouldn't have known about it), which didn't bother me because it wasn't too extreme. Some other faint praise: This movie is pretty, as befits a romance, and the flashes and tableaus that looked out of place in "The Help" were fitting here; even the ending is rendered in a way that makes it almost beautiful. Scherfig's camera zips and lingers along with (befitting) the plot, and there are a lot of fun subtle nods to the passage of time, particularly the karaoke scene. The in-role aging of the characters is realistic and not distracting, and it's always nice to see Romola Garai getting work (here as Dexter's rich, flighty girlfriend with the weird family).

The prettiness isn't enough to save it, though. Hathaway, an actor I like more than a lot of people I know who griped about her casting, is a major distraction in the first third because of her all-over-the-place accent and "Hollywood ugly." (In which beautiful woman + glasses + frizzy hair = not attractive.) More seriously, Sturgess and Hathaway have more chemistry on the poster above than they do in the entire movie. This is a highly personal judgment and maybe it has nothing to support it other than a feeling, but the needle, it doth not move.

And bigger than all that -- I predicted at some point that I would like this movie better than the book, and I was correct! But I'm not sure whether it was because what really rattled me about the book had already been spoiled for me before I got to the movie, so I didn't have to have that moment again. (I was looking for my review of it on here when I remembered that I had produced it back in January for a website that put me through 2 rounds of edits and then stopped returning my emails, of course not paying me for any of my time.) Yet even as I disliked the book there was a catharsis in it that the movie either doesn't try to attempt, or doesn't pull off. I felt a little sad at its end, and then I felt nothing, which was worse than feeling sad.


Filmbook verdict: When I walked out of this movie I was prepared to say, see the movie, don't read the book. But now I feel so tepid about the whole thing I'd say, don't bother.

Ben Folds-Nick Hornby collaboration out today

Hornby lyrics and Folds melodies. I'm anxious to check this one out. (Fellow New Yorkers, they will be appearing together at a Housing Works benefit on October 12.)

Sondre Lerche Just Read JULIET, NAKED

The Norwegian singer also suggested novelist/screenwriter/director Peter Hedges to direct, not surprising given that they worked together on "Dan in Real Life." (If you've seen the movie, you can see Sondre playing with his band over the end credits.)

I like Ricky Gervais in everything, but who will play Tucker?

Nick Hornby returns...

...to his column in The Believer! At the end of 2008 the HIGH FIDELITY author announced he was ending monthly installments of "Stuff I've Been Reading," the source of three collections of essays about reading at once casual and passionate. (A major influence on this blog, for certain.) Now you can read an excerpt from his newest on the Believer site, in which he compares himself to a boomerang child.

O frabjeous day! Thanks to blogmigo Wade Garrett for sending me this.

The Ethicist on library fines

Finally, the important stuff!

I borrowed “Juliet Naked,” the latest Nick Hornby novel, from my local library a few weeks ago. It is due today. Unfortunately I’m only about halfway through and can’t renew it, because it is on hold for another patron. I’m willing to pay the penalty, 25 cents a day, so I can keep reading. May I do that, or must I return it knowing that someone else is waiting for it? RACHEL BUCCI, SALEM, ORE.

You must return the book. That 25-cent charge is not a rental fee but a goad to return it promptly. As you note, other people are waiting for the book, hence the library’s decision not to let you renew it. That the fee is inadequate to provide a proper incentive, that the library does not instead charge $25 a day or $250 a day or impose a vigorous flogging (as described in the no-doubt-renewable “Mutiny on the Bounty”), bespeaks ineffectual enforcement tactics, not the freedom to keep a popular book past its due date. Similarly, the willingness and wherewithal to pay a speeding ticket does not make it O.K. to speed. (That’s why some countries make the price of a speeding ticket proportional to the daredevil’s income.) The injunction “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time” is specious. It should be “Don’t do the crime.” The public library is such a splendid institution; you should honor what I suspect you know to be the intent of this rule rather than embrace some sort of money-talks philosophy.

update: Bucci returned the book. She intends to check it out again.

from today's NYT Magazine. I feel like while returning a book late may not be fair, it's a bit of a stretch to raise it to unethical. We don't know whether Ms. Bucci needs to keep the book out another day or two -- say, on a rainy weekend when running the simplest errand makes you want to just build an ark already -- or for a few weeks more. There are no degrees in ethical difference, but practically speaking, there are.

Then again, I clearly have a financial interest in this topic. (I also found the book in question very hard to put down, but that's neither here nor there.) What do you think?

Post-Oscars Reverse Filmbook Special: Lynn Barber's AN EDUCATION

As a book supremacist, I nearly always try to read the book a movie is based on before watching the movie itself. I didn't think to do this for "An Education," the Best Picture-nominated movie about a teenage girl in London in the '60s, but when I looked it up afterward I discovered the book hadn't even come out in the U.S. yet. When I got an e-mail out of the blue from Atlas Books about the memoir the movie was based on, I was pretty excited.

If you haven't seen the movie yet and you should, a quick non-spoilery summary: Jenny, a teenager who fancies herself a sophisticate in training, meets an older man named David when he gives her a lift home from orchestra rehearsal. (Orchestra: where trouble begins.) David seems to be a portal into the glamorous world Jenny dreams of entering, much more than the college education her parents have always insisted she needs to succeed in life, but is he really? It boasts a screenplay by fellow British author Nick Hornby, which was also nominated for an Oscar but lost (to "The Hurt Locker," I think "Precious," my mistake).

The book, while short, covers Barber's whole life, while the movie only shows a few of her teenage years. I guess it's a spoiler then to reveal that she does not die by the end of the movie, but you're bright, you probably figured that out. After the events shown in the movie took place, Barber went on to have a pretty interesting life. She worked at Penthouse when it was a tiny start-up; she hobnobbed with the Condé Nast crew in New York; she had children and a career at a time when most nice girls didn't.

That's the first important difference. The second is that Barber's prose is very spare and matter-of-fact, employing the understatement some would call classically British to tasks like describing the content of Penthouse (apparently it was classier back then?) or relating her husband's struggle with cancer. The movie plays up the difference between Jenny/Lynn's shabby, drab family home and dull classroom existence and the flashbulb-happy, opulent life she is exposed to through David (Simon in the book); add a striking color palette and a few well-chosen touches of music, and seeing Barber's experiences in the movie is a much richer experience than reading about it. (For director Lone Scherfig, who began in the Dogme 95 tradition, employing these tools must feel like an embarrassment of riches.)

I don't mean to say that Hornby or Scherfig captured Barber's life better than she did, because that would be ridiculous. But it's easier to assign a particular arc to a section of your life rather than all of it, and somewhere along in adaptation it must have been decided that this was the section to focus on. Barber makes it clear that what happened to her as a teenager changed her life, so it's not an incorrect vision by any means. Still, I appreciated being able to complete the picture through the book, because I would have wondered otherwise what became of her.

Verdict: If you see the movie, you should definitely read this book. Run out and buy it now if you're a teenage girl and you liked the movie, because while I liked "An Education" more than I expected to, I would have loved it at, say, 15, but also seen it as a tragedy, and the book offers some perspective. With age comes wisdom, kids! It's my birthday, I should know.

FTC cover-assery: as mentioned, Atlas Books sent me a free copy to review.

Holiday Gift Guide 2009: Books About Reading, Writing And Writers

Let's kick this off with the books you're most likely to want to buy for yourself if you are reading this blog. Don't do it. Think about how surprised your reading-mad relatives and friends will be when you pull out something stellar like these five-plus entries.

Elizabeth Benedict, MENTORS, MUSES AND MONSTERS: 30 WRITERS ON THE PEOPLE WHO CHANGED THEIR LIVES. I love a good thick biography but these anthologies scratch the same itch with their snapshot versions. I'd love to know what Jane Smiley found at the famed Iowa Writers Workshop, or what it was like for Joyce Carol Oates to meet her rival and actually like him. As with all books you want to give around this time of year, this is the kind of volume you'll want to keep around.

Haruki Murakami, WHAT I TALK ABOUT WHEN I TALK ABOUT RUNNING. This is not an accident, this book is as much about the Japanese author's career in letters as it is his penchant for marathons and triathlons. While occasionally self-contradictory, Murakami's startlingly personal memoir explores how his hobby feeds his work because, as he writes, "when we use writing to create a story a kind of toxin that lies deep down in all humanity rises to the surface. All writers have to come face-to-face with this toxin and, aware of the danger involved, discover a way to deal with it."

Shahriar Mandanipour, CENSORING AN IRANIAN LOVE STORY. This book, another James Wood-approved pick, presents itself as a novel written by a Tehran college student which has been pre-censored (but not indecipherably) by the authorities. I'm captivated by the unconventional form and the opportunity to get to know Mandanipour (an exiled Iranian film critic) through his first novel being translated into English.

Heidi Julavits, Ed Park and Vendela Vida (ed.), READ HARD: FIVE YEARS OF GREAT WRITING FROM THE BELIEVER. Collection of essays from everyone's favorite anti-snark McSweeney's project. **Bonus 2008 Re-Run** As long as a few people I know have not read them yet I will keep recommending and giving Nick Hornby's Believer essay collections. I only wish he'd kept up the column so they didn't have to end. (I finished the last one, SHAKESPEARE WROTE FOR MONEY, in January.)

THE PARIS REVIEW INTERVIEWS, VOLS. I-IV. Frankly, I haven't been that good this year; one volume a year for the next four Christmases would probably be fair. And I might need that long to absorb the wealth of interviews in this box set. Maud Newton writes for NPR that the collection "enables us to continue believing that the authors we revere are effortlessly wise and entertaining."

FTC cover-assery: I got the Murakami book from the library and I bought all the Nick Hornby books. Seriously: so good.

Photo: Detail from tofuttibreak

Really, what is the point of dispensing rabbinical wisdom if you people are just going to take no notice? If you’re coming to an event over the next few weeks, in the UK and the US, with the express purpose of asking me for my guidance in professional or matrimonial matters, I really must insist that you do what I say, otherwise the whole thing is a waste of my time and yours. (There may be a simple but legally binding document for you to sign.)

--Nick Hornby wants his words of wisdom to be taken seriously, damn it! Keep it in mind if he's coming to your East or West Coast town on tour for his new book, JULIET, NAKED. But what would you go to Hornby for advice for, pray tell?

Post-Its: Frank McCourt Memorial Edition

ETA 9/23: The public memorial service for Frank McCourt will be held on October 6 at 5PM at Symphony Space (2537 Broadway) in New York. According to their site, a limited number of tickets will be available at the box office between 3 and 5PM that day, or you can stream it online at symphonyspace.org. Malachy McCourt mentioned the memorial earlier in an August 5 article in the Irish Echo, where he also said authors Peter Quinn and Colum McCann would be in attendance. I'm not affiliated with the McCourt family, Symphony Space or Stuyvesant HS; I'm just trying to help!

---

Even if you didn't like his books (or don't remember what you thought about them when you read them, ahem), the ANGELA'S ASHES author put in 30 years as a New York City public school teacher and that is nothing to sniff at. Here's a nice recollection from RAPTURE READY author Daniel Radosh. We choose to honor this Irish-American with Brits who are sad, drunk and barely legal:

• Another week, another book list. The L.A. Times runs down the best postmodern books from "Hamlet" (yes, that one) to I AM NOT SIDNEY POITIER. (Two cheers in this corner for THE BLIND ASSASSIN and REMAINDER.) This list is flawed in ways that the commenters have already started pointing out, but I still want to do it. Book club, anyone?
  


• "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" opened this past week atop the box office despite being, tonally speaking, a complete mess. If you have any interest in this movie, you'll probably get these not-for-children Harry Potter "Yo Mama" jokes. (via Cristin Stickles on Twitter)
  


• From the Department Of What Nick Hornby Is Up To: His new movie, "An Education," out in limited cities October 9:
  
  Looks like a British version of a movie I once walked out of, but I will withhold judgment. (via lindsayism)
  


• Same department, via Emily of The General Point, here's a link to Dominic West reading from HIGH FIDELITY. Oh, that brow.
  


• Thanks to Joe Queenan in the New York Times, I'm officially adding literary escort to my list of fantasy jobs, since I love books and am not above playing cruise director. In fact, electronic shingle: If you are an author coming to New York City inexplicably reading this blog and you need a literary escort, drop me a line. I speak Midwestern nice and I know where things are.


• Finally, I can't remember where I saw Dude Watchin' With The Brontës first, but I love it, particularly every expression on Anne's face. Anne, I'm sorry I never read any of your books.

Now the cupboard is bare

I drew out my reading of SHAKESPEARE WROTE FOR MONEY as long as I could because I knew there was no more where it was coming from. I know Nick Hornby has a lot of irons in the fire, but my rage at discovering this third collection of "heartfelt literary snack food" (TM W.G.) in the form of Believer columns was going to be his last was akin to the feeling I got when I finished watching the "Office" Christmas special, or when my favorite podcast decided to go off the air forever. When someone decides to end something great, you're supposed to understand they have their reasons -- but that doesn't make it any less painful.

In SHAKESPEARE..., Hornby sputters when he has been made part of a punchline in a book about the iPod, so I won't speculate on why he decided not to keep his column any more. I will point out that according to his blog a movie he wrote, "An Education," will debut at Sundance later this month. Wish I were going!

But even in the months where Hornby didn't read any books, he always had something interesting to say about it. (Those were usually the months where soccer -- er, football -- took pride of place.) THE POLYSYLLABIC SPREE was an inspiration to me in that it caused me to want to examine my own reading life more, when I had been content to move within it without looking for patterns. His habit of virtually erasing books he read and didn't like by calling them "a much lauded debut by a well-known author" or something similar was annoying, but maybe the Believer made him do that.

Now it's up to us to bear the torch, something that This Girl Called Automatic Win has already been doing in the same format, and which I will keep on in my own way.

Shakespeare Wrote For Money

...is the title of the new Nick Hornby collection of essays about reading, his third and final collection from the magazine "The Believer." "Stuff I've Been Reading," Hornby's now-defunct column, was my favorite part of "The Believer," but at least we have THE POLYSYLLABIC SPREE, HOUSEKEEPING VERSUS THE DIRT and now SHAKESPEARE WROTE FOR MONEY which I have just preordered. Read Sarah Vowell's introduction to the book at McSweeney's.

I just saw Sarah Vowell read, but I'm going to see her again next month at the New School's "State By State" reading along with Jonathan Franzen and Alexander Payne. Hopefully I will have finished STATE BY STATE by then, although I already know it's one of those books I want to linger over.