Re: documentary on salinger?

Cecilia -- thanks for the description of The Hours...makes me want to see
it that much more.

Kim -- responses below.

Kim Johnson wrote:

> it's not that i necessarily have a reverence for
> joyce. i just want my mind's image of joyce to remain
> the photographs and that one clip of him walking down
> a parisian street in the '30s and those two instances
> of *his* incomparable voice reading from 'ulysses' and
> 'finnegans wake'. i don't want some actor blurring my
> mind's visual and aural image of joyce.

I think I see what you mean. This is more of an issue for me with
fictional characters -- I think both fictional and real characters are
subject to interpretation, but there's quite a bit outside any of an
author's books that allow us to interpret him or her -- interviews with old
friends, family, publishers, letters, etc. There's a sense in which _my_
image of Joyce, say, is less personal to me. Joyce was what he was
regardless of my image of him, and understanding other images of Joyce can
help me understand the real Joyce a bit more.

> it's not that i revere holden; it's that each reader's
> holden is their own holden. holden's face and body
> movements and voice is exactly *right* for each
> reader. once one starts mixing in x's or y's face and
> voice, what do you have happen the next time you read
> 'the catcher'? (perhaps i lack the ability to factor
> out/forget the intrusion once it's happened.)

Yeah, I see this. Last time this was really an issue for me was the Harry
Potter movies. I don't know that I can recall Harry exactly as I pictured
him any more. I remember judging the film by how close it came to the
Harry (and other characters) that I'd formed in my mind, though, and
thinking it did a pretty good job overall.

But then there's that drawing of Harry on the cover of the book.

> because it's not *joyce* who is turning his life into
> film.

Well, yeah, but Joyce wasn't a film maker either :).

> my paltry point was that the movies wouldn't leave out
> the hand job or the steamy letters because the movies
> are the movies. granted, that walk with nora was a
> crucial point in joyce's life, it's just that i don't
> need to see *any* point of joyce's life portrayed on
> our glorious cinematic screens.

I think it depends on the person making the film, really. The _Nora_ film
was hardly an international blockbuster and never will be. People making
these films don't need sensationalism to sell their films, because they
will either sell without it or will turn away the audience it does have.

> it's rumoured that beckett was aghast at ellmann's
> decision, and hence would never consent to ellmann's
> desire to be beckett's biographer.
>

I believe that...

> i do agree that movie versions of books tend to whip
> up some sales and, one hopes, a few more sensitive
> readers will discover writers they might not have
> known.

I think a good example of this working in my case is the movie "Frida" with
Selma Hayek. It's a good, good film about Mexican painter Frida...the last
name escapes me...and her husband Diego Rivera -- about their infidelities,
their love, their politics, the way their lives contradicted their
politics, etc. etc. Nice depiction of Trotsky too. The film creatively
wove her paintings into the narrative (any description of the way it did so
would sound stupid...you just have to see it) so that the film worked
almost as a biographical interpretation of her art (justified or not).

The Smithsonian Magazine, conveniently, has Frida on the over of its latest
issue.

Anyway, the upshot of all this is that the film made me very curious about
her art and to chase it down where I can. I think that's a good thing.

Jim

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Received on Tue Nov 12 12:03:37 2002