Wednesday 17 October 2018
On the Adaptation of Books
With
all respect to everyone involved with the 2015 BBC adaptation of Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr.Norrell, I have to say that it
didn't touch the greatness of the book, which is one of the greatest
books I've ever read. I talked the show up a lot before it began, as I
was so excited to see an adaptation; so many of my friends and family
who frustratingly ignored my appeals to read the book might finally
allow their attention spans to be drawn into the wondrous enchantment of
England's returning magic by virtue of watching TV for an hour every
week.
Unfortunately, as is the case with
all televisual adaptations, they had to employ actors to play the parts,
rather than use the very real characters who live inside the book and
my head; they had to use special effects to demonstrate the magic,
rather than use the very real magic that lives inside the book and my
head. So there was never any escape from the awareness that what one was
witnessing was an adaptation, a facsimile several degrees removed from
the transformative power of the book. Perhaps it's partly due to my
geographical proximity to John Uskglass's earthly capital (I'm forty
miles south of Newcastle), but this book changes my world; it uncovers
my true England. It reminds me to listen to the song of the stones, the
skies and the rivers, to have respect for the shadows in the corners of
my rooms, and for those ancient peoples with whom we share this land.
You're simply not going to get that in something so clearly knocked
together on a budget and shoved on after the news. No-one I expressed my
love of the book to watched more than a few episodes, and I couldn't
blame them.
Adaptations are always
limited in the first instance and will never be the book. The only way
they can be as good as the art upon which they are based is if they take
an idea and fly with it, becoming something entirely new. Apocalypse
Now, for example. However great the Lord of the Rings movies were, or
Game of Thrones, they will always be someone's interpretation of the
books, tying the non-reader to one particular version of it, whereas the
reader can make something entirely new of the source material,
something almost entirely real, limited only by their own imagination.
The map can never be the place.
That
said, I'm looking forward to giving the TV adaptation of Jonathan
Strange & Mr.Norrell another look, liberated as I now am from the
weight of expectation, or the hope to convert others to the cause of
English magic. This story will either find you and cast its spell, or it
won't. The desire that the enchantments which bind us should also
accommodate others is, in the end, a lost hope.
Tuesday 16 October 2018
Yob Live at Leeds
YOB
Left Bank, Leeds
Wednesday 10th October
Ablaze
The Screen
Ball of Molten Lead
The Lie that is Sin
Our Raw Heart
Grasping Air
Breathing from the Shallows
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
