in praise of film adaptations

and "bad" books

Movies turned me into a voracious reader. Well, really, I trace it back to a single movie, stored across several VHS tapes, recorded by my generous cable-subscribing aunt around 1996. Can you guess to which beloved film I refer? The BBC production of Pride & Prejudice, of course!

Forget BSB & NSYNC; These were my teen idols

I guess it’s more of a series, but back then I looked on it as a single 6-hour journey into delight. There was one memorable day where I watched the whole thing through twice (once at my house, once at a friend’s). What I’m trying to convey here is that I watched it a lot. Like, A LOT.

Throughout my young adult years, my mom was often urging me to read various books, suggestions I always spurned because I didn’t want to be told what to do. And obviously, if my mom liked reading, then it couldn’t be that cool. But sometime around the dawning of this pervasive P&P era, she convinced me to read a regency romance novel: Moonraker’s Bride by Madeline Brent. It was formula fiction at its best and I loved it. In fact, it was the first book that left me hungry for another book I might like as much. I devoured all the Brent novels we had in the house and then, desperate for more, I turned to Jane Austen. After all, weren’t all her books taking place at the same time as these others I liked? 

I started in, naturally, with Pride & Prejudice. My immersion into the film had given me a net for catching the novel—for understanding the plot and antiquated prose and the social and political nuances of the day. Plus, it was hilarious! Even (gasp!) better than the movie!? I read it and several of Jane’s others, which we owned in a collection. This shift in literary trajectory threw me into the arms of more 19th-century classics—Count of Monte Cristo, The Scarlett Pimpernell, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I read and loved them all.

And then I became an English major. But let’s not veer off into tales of woe. 

It’s easy to be snobbish about books when you love them so much. I’m very picky nowadays about what I read (there’s only so much time in one life, after all), but I firmly reject the moral idea of a “bad” book. It wouldn’t be hard to make the argument that Moonraker’s Bride is not a great book. But it was also one of the most important of my life.

I sometimes see parents decrying the popularity of graphic novels as “not real” books. (Ironically, my mother is one of these.) But whatever draws kids—and adults, for that matter—toward reading has value. I saw firsthand how graphic novels, with their irresistible art and minimal text, coaxed my middle daughter into reading confidence. 

Neil Gaiman asserts that

“...there is [no] such a thing as a bad book for children… Do not discourage children from reading because you feel they are reading the wrong thing. Fiction you do not like is a route to other books you may prefer. And not everyone has the same taste as you.”

To this I would add that there is no such thing as a bad movie adaptation. Of course, there actually are very terrible movie adaptations, but what I mean is that in this world of on-demand programming and lamenting about how children hardly read anymore, an adaptation might have the power to draw a reluctant reader to the original source. 

My niece, for example, who only ever reads occasional fan fiction online, saw The Goldfinch movie and asked for the book for Christmas. Or my oldest daughter, who caught a snippet of HBO’s Station Eleven series and asked to read the book. Her first voluntary foray into grown-up fiction!

Yes, the book will always be better. But sometimes the door between a book and its adaptation swings both ways.

What are some of your favorite film adaptations? I’d love hear!

Cheers,
Lacy

P.S. I recently listened to the most delightful podcast about Sense & Sensibility and its 1995 adaptation (wasn’t that just a golden era for adaptations?)

P.P.S. Fun fact: Madeline Brent is the pen name of a man named Peter O’Donnel (1920-2010)

P.P.S. Everyone so decried The Goldfinch as a terrible adaptation that I put off seeing it for years. And when I finally did, I was shocked at how not-that-bad it actually was. Here’s a GQ article backing me up: ‘The Goldfinch’ Isn’t That Bad, You Guys. Lol. 

P.P.P.S. A bit of shameless plugging in case you’ve made it this far. I got a story published in the spring issue of The Pinch Journal! I wrote it about 10 years ago and it won a prize, which was exciting but didn’t include publication. And it seemed like absolutely no one wanted to publish it for a long time. But then, years and revisions later, someone did. The End. Let’s keep on keeping at it, dear ones!

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