Wood on Current Fiction

[Meg Larson]

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From: <MalignD at aol.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2004 5:44 PM
Subject: Re: Wood on Current Fiction


> <<One could also argue that Coover's statement is stupid. Think about it, what novel can't be filmed?>>
> 
> I like Coover's formulation better that Woods's, other than the word "never," speaking, as it does, to the issues both of art and commerce.  And, although it's probably true that any novel can be filmed (and although there is always the possibility of someone brilliant waiting to prove you wrong), it's difficult to see how some novels could be equalled or improved in filming it, which I assume is at least part of Coover's point -- one art form losing ground to another for one or more of a variety of reasons.  A film of The Unnamable? 
> 
> On the other hand, had Coover his way, we wouldn't have the Godfather movies.

I re-read The Godfather every few years--it's a fav, obviously--and it's prolly one of the few novels that I can read without seeing the movie in my head.  The movies (at least the first two)stand on their own, but for some reason, they don't intrude upon my reading.  My son and I read a lot of pop fiction together, and the blanket statement I can prolly safely make is that most of it is written for the screen, so to speak.  

If. indeed ". . . [this] is at least part of Coover's point -- one art form losing ground to another for one or more of a variety of reasons", then this smacks, in part, of elitism--he's lamenting the loss of status, not the inequality of art as a form.

Maybe the question is not what novel can't be filmed, but what novel shouldn't be filmed.  Does a novel need to be filmed? 
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