Monday, August 25, 2008
Her Half-Turned, Half-Veiled Visage Haunts Me...
...every time I sit down to read. Meryl...
For thousands and thousands of years, books were just books. The early Greeks and Romans and Asian civilizations had books, of course, on long scrolls of papyrus or sheepskin. And if somebody wanted to publish, copies were painstakingly hand inked. And yes, perhaps at times in the intervening dozens of centuries books occasionally became something else; plays, most likely.
But these days, and for the past century or so, the most obvious and common reincarnation of a book is to become a movie (for simplicity's sake let's leave TeeVee out of this.)
And when a book becomes a movie, the book itself gets a new life.
I'm on vacation, and I'm reading John Fowles's The French Liutenant's Woman. (I'm in Virginia Beach again, and there are no RD Condensed books in this suite.)
Here, I'm going to digress and talk a bit about book covers.
| Book covers are probably more important than one would casually think. |
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When we read a book, a good book, it takes us away. For a time we are part of another realm, with characters we get to know, and in a world that in one way or another, to a greater or lesser degree, balances within a universe substantially different than the one we occupy in our own everyday lives.
In a historical novel, the fundamental differences are both time and place. Yet, even were I reading a story set in the present day on the Virginia Coast, I would be inhabiting the thoughts and cares of others--both the author's and his characters'. Because of the familiarity of the place, and time, it might feel like a tighter fit, but still there would be that vicariousness, that escape from my own world.
And when we read a book, and lose ourselves in it, the cover--with its illustration, or photography, or geometric design--becomes a reference point, a touchstone, the familiar symbol of that world, that dilatory universe, the doorway that we knock on each time we pick up the book to read, and each time we close that world and re-enter our own.
But when books become movies, it is inevitable--and has been since probably the late 1940s--that chronology and precedence gets perversely reversed, and the pre-existing book now becomes a post-film tie-in, and a scene from the movie, frozen and captured, becomes the paperback's cover.
So in 1981, when the film version of The French Liutenant's Woman released, thousands and thousands of Meryl Streep's stared hauntingly out from the new paperback edition of the 1969 novel, on racks in mall book displays and grocery store checkout lines.
And to this day, Meryl continues her half-shawled, vulnerable, tortured method-acting gaze in thousands of flea markets, garage sales, and used book stores--though here and now, shelved spine out, she probably must stare, in the dark, at the back cover of Fowles's The Magus or The Collector. (Or E.M. Forster's A Room With a View?)
Because Fowles's novels are so rich and involving, so complete an immersion into a universe intricately designed and created, I have hesitated to view the film version--until I've read the novel. I wanted my experience of this novel--especially this novel--to be unsullied, uninfluenced by another's vision.
And, indeed, 4/5 of the way through the novel, Charles Smithson's 1867 England, and Victoria's world and empire as reflected through his eyes and soul, is fully created, revealed in pieces exactly as delivered, piece by exquisite piece, at the pace and in the order prescribed by Fowles when he wrote FLW in 1969.
But each time I sit down and open the book, and finish a chapter and close it, I am faced with Meryl's face.
Don't get me wrong, I completely understand why the publisher must use the film's imagery to tie in with the new edition. Marketing must resonate with the mind of the consumer, and Streep was already a star in 1981.
And she was undoubtedly well cast(1) for the role of Sarah Woodruff.
It has been nearly 40 years since I read The Lord of the Rings. Another rich world and universe, twice created, cast, and played--first by Tolkien, then by me. And by each enthralled reader of this wonderful trilogy.
Of course, when Peter Jackson, a director of horror films, cast Elias Wood in the leading role of Frodo, communities of readers (talk about a book that has many lives!!) revolted.
After that first film The Fellowship of the Ring, came out, the clamor about casting quelled. And I agree, the film was well cast, given the sacrifices that any film must make in transforming written vision to screen. Yet, for me, and I suspect many others, Hobbits cannot be adequately portrayed by humans.
Hobbits aren't simply small humans with hairy feet and pointed ears. They're another species. Their proportions and faces are different.
Yet, having seen the film, now, in my mind, it's difficult to not see Frodo as Wood.
When I went on vacation, I wanted to immerse myself in a good read, yet a thought-provoking read. I wanted to read Fowles.
When I picked up my paperback of FLW, and looked at the cover, I briefly considered seeking out an older edition. A pre-Meryl version.
But that would be silly.
Still, I sort of wish I had ripped the cover off.
Nothing against Meryl, but I would have preferred to cast it myself.