Watching the novel

Watching the movie after one has read the novel can often be disappointing, which can also be true when one does it in the opposite order. Kristen Lopez looks at things a little differently in But Have You Read the Book? (2023). She argues that the book and the movie may often tell somewhat different stories, but they both can have value.

She looks at 52 movies, from Frankenstein in 1931 to Passing in 2021) and the novels from which they were adapted. Her conclusion? The novels are as worth reading as the films are worth watching.

As the title suggests, Lopez writes with a movie bias. That is, she starts with the movie, then tells us what's different in the novel, rather than vice versa. Rarely does she say that one is better than the other, even when they are very different.

As a practical matter, to tell the entire story contained in a typical novel, including all the characters and all the conversations and events, could make the adapted film six hours long or more. Thus much has to be cut out.

Less forgivable, at least to those who read and loved the book first, filmmakers often change the names of characters, the locales, the titles and even the plots. The first filmed version of Frankenstein, for example, is radically different from Mary Shelley's book. Some remakes have been more faithful, yet that doesn't make the original film any less worth watching. The same is true of Rebecca, Dr. No, Rosemary's Baby, True Grit, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Princess Bride, Fight Club and all the other films/novels she discusses.

All this has frustrated students down through the years who have written "book reports" after watching the movie.

So typically different are novels and the movies based on them that it can be startling when a movie like No Country for Old Men comes along. The Coen Brothers film is essentially the same as the Cormac McCarthy novel. So if you've seen the movie, why read the book? Lopez asks. But look at it the other way around. When one loves a novel, what one most wants is a movie that puts the identical story on the screen.