Day 14 – a book I would recommend for the High School or College reading list… well fuck me, that’s a difficult one. Anything decent and modern, I’d say, as the national curriculum, at least in my day (Christ, how old do I sound?) had nothing seemingly past the 60s (apart from some Margaret Atwood, whose writing I detest…)
Secondary school children should be force-fed Joyce’s Dubliners (for The Dead, if nothing else – can you top it as a short story, as an observation on life and marriage and social mores, as a snapshot character study?); I also found the Middle English of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales eye-opening, so I’d make the Prologue, at least, compulsory; finally, I’d say that the poetry of one Ogden Nash is worth study, as much as Donne or Milton or any one of the Romantics, because comedy and wordplay are so absent from English Literature in schools – serious, issue-led works are all fine and dandy, and big meaty plays like Othello and Hamlet, or Streetcar, or poetry like the Divine Comedy can allow 16 year olds to expostulate on themes and the like – but to really understand the effect of well-chosen language, read comic verse aloud and then try to work out why it’s funny.
For example, here is Ogden Nash’s brilliant “Fleas”:
Adam/Had’em
That’s all there is, but it’s pithy, witty, and dark. It tells you a lot about what doesn’t get mentioned in Bible studies, and humanises one of the most enigmatic characters in Genesis. It plays with New York cadences, and was deliberately written to attempt the world’s shortest poem – it qualifies, as it’s got metre and certainly isn’t prose. Why isn’t this sort of thing studied in schools?
Day 15 – my favourite book that deals with a foreign culture. I’ve already covered two books that do this (in Middlesex and A Suitable Boy) and while my pick isn’t a stone-cold favourite of mine, it’s suitable in that it deals, solely, with experiencing a foreign culture: Shogun by James Clavell. A big historical novel about the political machinations in Elizabethan-era Japan, told through the perspective of an English sailor marooned there who manages to advance, somewhat, in a wildly alien culture, it’s a cracking read, barreling along with vim, vigour and violence.
Day 16 – my favourite book-to-movie. 2001: A Space Odyssey shouldn’t count, because Arthur C Clarke wrote the book and the script simultaneously, as part of the wider Kubrick project, so I’ll plump with Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Whilst, in the context of the four behemoths of fiction that came after it, the third in the saga is quite slim, in relation to its forebears, it marked a great leap forward in the depth of storytelling and characterisation that Rowling put across to her audience, and a recognition of their growing maturity.
The film, too, was a great leap forward for the franchise – Alfonso Cuaron came onboard to direct, and ripped up the cutesy kids film atmosphere of the first two films, and made a dark, almost arty movie, where Dementors freeze roses, seasons transition through ghostly montages and the whole feel of the design is one of foreboding. Dark stuff indeed, and one which set the bar for the rest of the series.
Day 17 – a book-to-movie horror story. This is the thing – a lot of books I’ve read haven’t been made into films, and most of the films I see aren’t ports of books, or are ports of books I haven’t read… but two nights ago, I went with a couple of friends to see Breaking Dawn, Pt 1. Oh, dear, god. The books are a very guilty pleasure, I will admit, because they are pulpy trash with a hard line in comedic Mormon penetration fantasy – something I can’t resist laughing at. However, the film was a poorly made, poorly acted, poorly scripted (and that’s a talent, considering the source material – which I enjoyed, but which can’t ever be called literary) and poorly scored advert for the brands of all three leading actors. Some of the scenes were so bad, the cinema hooted with laughter (apart from one Twihard, who was sternly shushing everyone), which would have been appropriate, if this wasn’t meant to have been a powerful moment showing Taylor Lautner’s breaking free of his wolf-master’s clutches and his dominance of the pack… instead, it sounded like an outtake from the Power Rangers film, a friend pointed out.
I loved it – it was so utterly awful, it’ll be cult watching. However, as an adaptation of a book, it’s probably the worst I’ve ever experienced.
