6. 2001: A Space Odyssey

By: Arthur C. Clarke

There have been many times since I've first seen and fell in love with the movie over the last 20 years that I have picked up and put down this book. For some reason, it just was never able to keep my attention. However, this time, something took, and I read through it in a day or two.

One of the most interesting things to me was the prologue, in which Clarke explains the writing process that he went through in collaboration with Kubrick, and the origins of their idea, and how the book and the film went their different ways in some important respects.

They really are two very different things, and are a fascinating example of any comparison of novels and films- especially because they came out (almost) simultaneously. What is amazing is how well each stand on its own - they are mirror images of each other only on the surface. The book openly deals with question of man's future, while the movie intertwines the idea of breaking through to something that is incomprehensible in a more abstract way. Although its been years since I've seen 2010, I do remember the one line that didn't make it into the first film, but was critical to the first book, and its great that they brought it back (even if the movie wasn't very good).

My god, it's full of stars.

5: The Walking Dead: No Way Out

By: Robert Kirkman, Charlie Aldard, and Cliff Rathburn

I've almost made it through the first season of the TV version of the Walking Dead- and as brutal as it is, I have no idea how they can match the absolute abject horror and brutality of the comic. I can not see this playing out on TV and maintaining an audience- and the truth is, I hope they don't.

They've already starting pushing the TV series in a different direction, and I hope they keep going that way. The truth is I don't want to see it.

The horror of the Walking Dead ebbs and flows, and sometimes its bad, and sometimes its really bad. By the end of No Way Out, things get really bad.

After finding some safety in a walled community, things begin to fall apart for Rick and his crew. With each new problem, Rick has to make harder choices and be willing to make greater sacrifices.

This book ends with a moment so horrifying that like many of the readers in the 'letters' page in the following issue, I question whether I can continue with the series. The writers are obviously keenly aware of the line they're crossing, and some will feel its over the top, where some will feel that this creative team is willing to go where very few others will.

Perhaps both are true, and I'll stick with the series for a bit more and see what happens.

4. And Another Thing...

By: Eion Colfer

I'm not sure whether to blame short term memory or willful delusion to explain why I'd go and read yet another Douglas Adams style book by someone other than Douglas Adams. However, seeing as this is the 'official' sixth book in the even more now inappropriately named Hitchhiker trilogy, and seeing as the last book, Mostly Harmless ends on a bit of a downer, I felt the need to plow on, even if the franchise was handed over to new management.

Admittedly, the first chapter or so fooled me- it does start off quite good. Even the title is clever- like all the other books (since the first) the title is a reference to one of the books that it followed. In this case the title comes from the line in So Long and Thanks for All the Fish:

The storm had now definitely abated, and what thunder there was now grumbled over more distant hills, like a man saying "And another thing…" twenty minutes after admitting he's lost the argument.

The suggestion being that this book, in itself, is an unneeded post-script that will add nothing to the existing canon. You have to appreciate that kind of self-depricating irony. The first chapter finds the main characters living lives of luxury before they are whisked back to their current reality- where we left off in Mostly Harmless (roll over for spoilers) in the midst of earth's second destruction. At first, Colfer does a pretty amazing job at recreating the feel of a true Adams novel; he captures the Arthur Dent that is somehow both constantly miserable and likable at the same time. He nails the Ford Prefect who is seems so genuinely deep because of his ridiculous shallowness. He gets the comic relief of Zaphod pretty quickly with a neat turn of events for that character. Trillian is probably the least well fleshed out in the new book, but to be fair, she's not all that well fleshed out in the original series either (I'd like to cite as evidence for this how radically different she's portrayed in the film and BBC versions of the original book- much more so than any of the other characters).

Unfortunately, after that things start to fall apart. Perhaps part of this came from Colfer's attempt to salvage some of the ideas in Salmon of a Doubt into a workable new book. Prehaps it stems from what feels like a need to fill the book with clever in-jokes and references to minor characters and events from the previous novels. More likely it comes from the return of small characters that were originally only intended as funny asides, not to be brought back as major players. Certainly it comes from a weak plot which reads more like a post-script (and another thing...) to the original story, rather than the big finale that Adams never had the chance to pen himself. I can't pinpoint exactly what the problem is, but I can pinpoint exactly where it started to fall apart for me- where the title is funny and ironically meta- he riffs on improbability in another way that might have also been self-depricating, but comes across as a treatise on the banality of Adams' humor. In a guide entry, he writes that just about any two words selected at random and put together will find tons of listings in the H2G2- and while this simple concept is at the heart of some of Adams' funny asides, its also to be found in the basic assumptions of Surrealism - that new ideas are generated when two unrelated ideas are juxtaposed. While the 'meta-ness' of the title is endearing to the point that you can actually allow someone else to pick up the story where Adams left off, this passage seemed poorly conceived and vaguely insulting to Adams' legacy. True, this juxtaposition of randomness is one thing that Adams does- but he does it so well. I don't doubt it was intended as an homage to his style, but unfortunately, it doesn't read that way.

Finally, while this book finds a happier ending then Mostly Harmless, it's not all that much happier, we don't learn anything new, but more importantly, nothing changes for the characters, and they don't learn anything new. I really wanted to like this book, but the best I can say for it is that it has some very funny bits strung together by a pretty weak plot, and that it is really much better than Starship Titanic.

3. The Conversations

Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film
By: Michael Ondaatje

The Conversations is simply a series of discussions about the film editing process between fiction/non fiction writer Michael Ondaatje and Film Editor/Director Walter Murch. The real genius of this discussion though, is the depth of Murch's thoughts on the whole filmmaking process. He discusses a range of fascinating ideas. For example, why we can psychologically understand a film that jumps in time and place when it is so different from our experience of real life. How editing transforms meaning and represents a final draft of a film, beyond the script, and beyond what is shot.

He talks extensively about the possibility of a film notation (like musical notation) although to me, editing is closer to painting than music. That's just to say that I wasn't entirely convinced by this idea, but I'll defer to him on any big questions of editing.

More than anything else, Murch presents a fascinating discussion of editing as a true art form, and I doubt it possible to read this book and see it as anything else.

1&2: Scott Pilgrim: Precious Little Life and Scott Pilgrim Vs. the world

By: Brian Lee O'Malley

Were back here at Print is Dead after taking a year (and a half) hiatus for a bunch of reasons, not the least being a new baby, but mostly reasons that add up to my not having read much at all in the last year. This is not entirely true- I did read a bunch of art education type books (and even reviewed one on my other blog, which if I'd thought about it could have had at least one entry here last year if I cross posted, oh well). On to business:

Reading these two books confirms my feeling that it is not necessary and perhaps even counter productive to "read the book first". I thoroughly enjoyed Edgar Wright's film adaption of the Scott Pilgrim series, and would count it within my top 10 films of 2010. Wright's brilliant style is evident, even when filtered through the lenses of the "Hollywood Mainstream Machine" and the "Comic Book Adaptation Paradox" (these are two 'lenses' that I just made up, the first needs no explanation, and the second one I don't have a good explanation of yet. It has something to do with the idea that you've basically already got a storyboard and know in advance what the film is going to look like, but on the other hand comics have adapted some 'cinematic' techniques in the way they tell their stories).

Where was I? Yes. The point was that had I read these books first, I might not have enjoyed the film as much as I did. Not so much that I would have gone in with raised expectations (although that is certainly part of it as well) but because there is really no way to portray these characters with any real fidelity to the comic. In Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, he explains that the more simply that characters are drawn, the more we see of ourselves in them, and the more 'universal' they become (we all see a human face in a line and two dots if put in the right positions). Scott Pilgrim is simply drawn, and we identify with the characters not based on their complexity but on our ability to transfer ourselves into their lives. This doesn't mean that I don't think O'Malley has done a weak job at creating characters- quite the opposite- he's created characters which are both open to interpretation and specific and interesting (albeit mostly flat- at least, they are at this point in the story).

So the world of Scott Pilgrim is much richer in comic book form. Here there is time to get to know the characters a little better, and spend some time in the alternate-reality canada that Scott exists in. At the end of book 2, we're not even halfway through the scope of the film. This also represents one of my favorite sorts of fiction - it is magic realist (although a far cry from the original literary use of the term for the latin american work of Marquez and others) - but restrained. Most of the action takes place in a world similar to ours - a world in which we deal with the everyday mundanity of life by focusing on unimportant things like video games. However, every once in a while, we're removed from that world- in a way that is often much more subtle than how it is presented in the film. It would be nice if mainstream films could take their time to build a story like these comics do - and while they're at it, find this terrific balance of the familiar with the ridiculous.

Grades:

Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life: A-

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World: A

Recommendation: Recommended for your next graphic novel reading endeavor.