novelization

reading the classic crime authors hammett and chandler, i'm struck by how effectively their novels were translated to the screen in the maltese falcon and the big sleep. (actually chandler's aesthetic sometimes seems closer to more recent movies like sin city.) to the point that, despite its excellent descriptive prose, the original novel of the maltese falcon reads like a novelization of the bogart film. because the novel always gives us an external view of the characters rather than relating their thoughts or perspectives, there is virtually no remainder that is specifically literary, which could not be converted into film. (for this reason you could say that it's perfectly anti-modernist in greenberg's sense.)

on one hand i wouldn't want to make a reproach of this, because there's really nothing to reproach in the novel. but on the other hand, it seems like the best novels are generally impossible to translate to the screen, precisely because they take maximum advantage of the form's possibilities. some composers, including fauré, and, if my memory is correct, brahms, have avoided translating the most perfect poems into songs, partially because, if a poem is perfect as a poem, there is nothing left for a composer to add and no reason to make it into a song. it's much better to pick poems that seem to leave something out, that are a little too simple here, or perhaps nonsensically flowery there (as many of dylan's lyrics), that need music to complete them.

of course it would be possible to translate joyce or woolf or even proust (it's been done) to the screen, but the result is so different from the novel that one ought to say the movie was inspired by the book rather than adapted from it. despite the popularity of the lord of the rings movies, fantasy also seems to me impossible to translate to the screen. magic, which is usually involved in the spiritual struggles of the characters in a novel, and accompanied by the lengthy narration of their thought-processes, almost always becomes mere spectacle when it is translated to the screen, because the visual dazzle dominates any internal dialogue that could be represented in a movie. it's interesting that hemingway, who is in some respects quite similar to hammett, has nevertheless proven highly resistant to screen adaptation, despite many attempts. perhaps this is because the lyrical quality of his works, which gives them such enduring value, has no film equivalent. for more practical reasons, erotic literature is also effectively impossible to film. a book can easily blend the artistic and the erotic as long as the quality of the writing remains high, and it will continue to read as literature. but because of the prudish standards in cinema, the same scenes represented in film would instantly be branded pornographic, and the director would be constrained to a budget too low to produce a quality film.

while i'm far from being a modernist, it certainly seems to me that a novelist ought to take advantage of the possibilities that are specific to his form, rather than taking his cue from the silver screen. to do otherwise is like writing for the piano as if it were a flute: occasionally this might create an interesting sound, but for the most part it would only artificially limit the available range and exclude the instrument's most effective idiom.