Lit. speed and film speed

[Patrick Schreuder]

     MantaRay wrote:
     
     The pace of the reading might be dictated by the reader i.e. s/he 
     might decide to read three lines then sleep but the pace of the novel 
     is written by the author. Pynchon's bizarre historical tangents into 
     the depth of each his characters (in GR) for instance tends to derail 
     what remains of a conventional plot which seriously slows the book 
     down. I don't think it decreases the pleasure because GR teaches how 
     to read differently, but it isn't the most imposing 20th century novel 
     for no reason.
     
     ----
     I think there's a difference between the difficulty of following a 
     certain narrative in a film or book, and it's "slowness". The slowness 
     i was talking about is the actual time it takes to read or see a 
     scene. Suppose we have a passage in a book that is quite dense and has 
     a rather weird narrative, this means that the reader will probably 
     read it quite slow. But he can, if he wishes, or is used to these kind 
     of passages, read it quickly. So we have a situation in which one 
     passage can take different ammounts of actual time. In a film, say 
     Stalker, the scene takes X ammount of time. If you and I were to see 
     this film, the scene would take as long for me as for you.
     
     Patrick S.
     
     PS
     
     The main problem I have with discussion about films vs books is that we 
     always seem to focus on the narrative part of the films. Films (for me) are 
     not about narrative but about visuals.