Reaction to Book Debates

I’ll be speaking on the interview with Jonathan Franzen about adults who read literature written for young adults. I have a lot of respect for the things he had to say on the topic and I think all of it was valid. No matter what he says really, it’s valid, since it’s strictly his opinion. It almost seems as if he is being self-absorbed in the beginning, especially when saying, “If it’s a loss, it’s their loss, not mine”. But I don’t see it as arrogant as it may have sounded. I think when you are in a business where you kind of fend for yourself, like writing, it’s important to have self-focus.

                What I really liked was what Franzen had to say about WHY adults choose to read things with such moral simplicity. He explained that a lot of people have hard lives and the last thing most of those people want to do, especially after “they’ve been jerked around by the world yet again”, is go home and “rub their noses in moral complexity”. I love it because I agree with it 100%. I get that reading can improve your intelligence and all, but I really only enjoy reading when it’s something I WANT to read and that won’t give me a head ache after 15 minutes of trying to understand it.

                On the topic of Jennifer Weiner, he is very straight forward and says what he thinks. I can’t really argue or advocate for anything he says because I’m not well-educated on her, or her work. In other articles I have read about her, the topic is, more or less, focused in a different direction.

Overall I like what Franzen had to say, though opinionated and blunt, isn’t that what you ask for in an interview?

American Psycho - Book to Movie Adaptation

                Starting off with some background, if I may. American Psycho, the novel, is about a man named Patrick Bateman. He is of the elite, working on Wall Street by day, and brutally killing innocent people by night. He kills out of pure hatred for the world he lives in and he kills anyone who lives a life he doesn’t agree with. Horrible. I know.

                Now that the background is covered I can talk about my feelings right? Comparing book to movie, which did I like better? The film. Not surprising for me, I am usually partial to film. The movie was over all much more comical than the book was. Not to make light of what Bateman was doing, or to render it as acceptable. But to make the horrible deeds done in the book slightly more tolerable in the on-screen adaptation. I can understand that some fans of the book would argue they left important aspects out of the movie that were in the book. But on the contrary, when you pay close attention in the movie the screenwriters did a really good job incorporating some of the more violent scenes in a less heated manner in the film.

                An example is one of the more controversial scenes in the novel where Bateman kills “some old fa*ot with a dog”. Book fans say it was overlooked in the movie and should have been included but when you pay attention, in the film when Jean finds Bateman’s notebook, the doodles in the book are doodles of the murders that actually happened in the book. As I said, a way to incorporate the well-known violent scenes in a less harsh manner.

                The book is really, really, really graphic. And at some points I think it’s a little much to say the least. I think the movie did a fine job pulling the overarching theme and making it presentable to the public which is all you can ask for when giving such vulgarity to start with.