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In Praise of Old(er) Books: Part 3

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The War of the Worlds: The Future is Always Now

H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds,1 has, over the years, been adapted many times and to various media (in just the last century and in the English language it was adapted both to film2 and radio.3)

The War of the Worlds, originally published in 1897, is a surprisingly easy read for a book written over a century ago. Set in then contemporary England, it may start at a stately pace, but by the time the narrator/protagonist is fleeing before the advancing Martians, the story has become an action thriller. The technology may still be bicycles, dog carts and horse-drawn artillery, but the panic and chaos on the roads feels modern.

The book seems almost to cry out for adaptation especially given its science fiction logic… we (the Earth) are invaded by aliens whose technology is so far advanced that we cannot even begin to understand how it works. Nothing we throw at the Martians does anything to stop them or even slow them down. We see their advanced technology only from the outside, from the point of view of those running in terror from the invaders.

That logic makes the basic story easy to adapt. In 1938, a radio play adapted by Howard Koch and featuring Orson Welles, set the story in New England where the American Army fought with the planes and armament developed during WWI and before WWII. Scientists were more involved than in the book, but basically only to explain to the listening audience where these capsules were coming from and perhaps even Martians’ motivation. Biplanes had replaced dog carts but human beings seemed not to fare any better than they had three decades previously.

The story is set in another venue in the 1953 movie. Now we are in California and now we have many scientists centrally involved. Unlike Independence Day, the fight against aliens is not led by the United States even though they had recently demonstrated their power in the second world war (and in the contemporaneous Korean War.) Unlike the book and the radio play, in this version of the story, there are women actively involved in resisting the Martians and we see some (mostly stereotyped) diversity among the American population.

In 2005, Spielberg moves the story back to roughly the same area focused on in the 1938 radio play… New York and New England. Again, the American military throws their best against the Martians and again, they are seen as part of unified effort on the part of all humanity to best the Martians. The protagonist is made more ‘relatable’ (a divorced father struggling with shared parental custody, a wide gap in wealth between the protagonist and his ex-wives new husband, anxious and recalcitrant children) and perhaps most pointedly, a protagonist who is no longer situated within the wealthy and the highly educated.

What makes the book evergreen in my opinion? Written at a time when England was beginning to grapple with the logic of colonialism and imperialism (and by a man well aware of it), the book’s themes echo down through the years. The tables have turned, we are now the people marveling at the advanced technology of the invaders (note all of these adaptations are placed in first world countries, countries with their own colonial pasts.) None of the versions posit a leader, a saviour, a ‘man on the white horse’… they are all generous to others, accepting that people will panic and do dreadful things under pressure but presenting the bulk of humanity as a ‘good’ thing.

What makes the book/movie/radio play painfully relevant to us today? All these adaptations had something in common—all were set in the NOW of the adaptation. Haskin’s 1953 movie is set in what is recognizably the America of the 1950s. Spielberg’s 2005 film starring Tom Cruise takes place in a recognizably current United States with military and civilian anti-Martian efforts limited to the currently existing technologies. Similarly technologies deployed against the Martian invasion in the 1938 radio play were those which the American public believed to be within the capabilities of the American military at that time.

The original book and the adaptations all present humanity with an existential threat, demonstrate that there is nothing that humanity can do to ward off that threat and then posits a deus ex machina that will save humanity and human civilization. The message is clear… when faced with an overwhelming threat don’t worry, SOMETHING will save us. In every case, original and adaptation, the moral is clear. There is nothing that WE can do to stop the destruction of our world and all our efforts will do us no good.

And this, unfortunately seems to have been a message learned. Today it is not Martians who pose the existential threat… it is climate change. And many of us seem to be waiting for the deus ex machina to arrive, to solve the problem.

At one point in the radio play a radio broadcasts “is there anyone out there” on a loop receiving no answer. I always thought that that is where the play should have ended. The Martians arrived, WE died. The End.

The War of the Worlds is now in the public domain. There many excellent e-editions available from Kobo.com for less than a dollar, while others are more expensive but also have forewords and commentaries that might help the modern day reader. Both Kobo.com and Libro.fm have multiple audiobook versions available (narrated by the cast of Star Trek.) Buying through these links supports Turns and Tales.

 

1 Wells, H. G. 2002 (1897). The War of the Worlds. New York, NY: Dover Publications.

2 Haskin, Byron. 1953. The War of the Worlds. United States: Paramount Pictures.

Spielberg, Steven. 2005. War of the Worlds. United States: Paramount Pictures.

3 Koch Howard. 1938 The War of the Worlds. New York Mercury Theatre of the Air

Coming Soon

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As booksellers we get advance copies/notice of books soon to be published. Here is a preview of some of the coming attractions. If you click on the images, you can buy theses titles through Kobo.com, our ebook supplier.

Down the Hatch: An Agatha Raisin Mystery
by M. C. Beaton with R. W. Green
Minotaur Books
Pub. Date 26 Oct 2021

Agatha Raisin made her debut as a PR agent/amateur sleuth in Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death in 1992. That book was the first of M. C. Beaton’s 30 Agatha Raisin novels. Marion Chesney (Beaton’s real name) was a prolific author who wrote several series of books under her own name and a number of pen names.

Chesney’s Agatha Raisin books were classic cozies but she herself was perhaps more down to earth and practical about the business of writing and the relationship between author and readership than most. She, unlike many other authors, had reached out and identified another author to pick up the pen/typewriter after she was unable to carry on her work. R. W. Green took over writing the Raisin books with Hot to Trot which was finished before Chesney died and published in 2020.

Down the Hatch is Green’s second Raisin book. His writing style and plotting isn’t quite the same as Beaton’s but this reader (and many others) find his work to be quite similar to Beaton’s. Beaton will never write another Agatha Raisin book, but for those who want to follow Agatha as she stumbles upon murders (as she seems fated always to do) to watch her ongoing relationship with James develop, watch her ever continuing battle with Detective Chief Inspector Wilkes, Green tells a good, one might even say, a cozy murder story.

True Crime Story: A Novel
by Joseph Knox
Sourcebooks Landmark
Pub. Date 07 Dec. 2021

This isn’t a nonfiction book about true crime, this is a novel, a story constructed not using the routine narrative pattern rather those of the true crime nonfiction books. The reader learns about Zoe Nolan, a young girl who walks out of her apartment one night and is never seen again. The story is told through interviews and stories about her family, her friends, her flatmates and a broad swathe of others with whom she was in contact in her life. On one level, thus, the book is about the attempts to solve a crime while on another level discussion of the crime is a tool to give us more insight into these people, these places this time. The book is designed to appeal both to those who are interested in character driven narratives and those who truly do enjoy true crime stories.

Do You Speak Fish?
By DJ Corchin, illustrated by Dan Dougherty
Sourcebooks eXplore
Pub. Date 05 Oct. 2021
Recommended for ages 4 and up.

As it says on the cover, this is “a story about communicating and understanding”. The tale is about a boy who tries in vain to communicate with a fish, a lion and a bee. When the fish doesn’t respond he initially jumps to the conclusion that the fish was being rude. But then he encounters a talking tree who asks the boy if he speaks Fish. As the boy talks with the tree the boy realizes that different animals and people have different ways of communicating so the fish wasn’t really being rude after all. In the end the kid, fish, lion and bee all learn each others’ languages and as a result of making that effort they now enjoy sitting under the talking tree having fun telling stories. The message is easily understood by the target audience; the book does an excellent job of communicating about communicating. It teaches children that their first impressions may not be correct, and may in fact get in the way of enjoyable experiences. Finding out where others are coming from can be beneficial for everyone, a good thing for young children to learn given how naturally inward-focused young children inevitably are. The illustrations are good, the tone is light-hearted, and there is enough humour to sustain interest.

Dark Night: A Mystery
by Paige Shelton
Minotaur Books
Pub. 07 Dec. 2021

From the Publisher: The third book in the gripping, atmospheric Alaska Wild series by beloved cozy author Paige Shelton…..

For the reader who has not read any other books in the Alaska Wild series, don’t worry. You don’t need to read either of those books to follow and enjoy Dark Night. Shelton provides enough contextual backstory and explanation to make the book understandable to those beginning the Alaska Wild series with book 3 without falling into the trap of repeating so much from earlier books that it turns off those who have read those books. This is actually a modified (loosened) locked room story. Benedict, Alaska is never completely cut off from the outside world although there are periods of time during which travel is almost impossible and it is clear that this isolation is both an attraction and a problem for different residents of the town. This doesn’t read as the typical ‘cozy,’ perhaps because of its setting. Alaska in general and Benedict in particular become characters in the story and when you reach the last page, murder having been solved, you will still find yourself hoping that Shelton has already started to write the fourth book in series. Beth Rivers (our protagonist) still has personal mysteries to be solved and Benedict and its inhabitants are far to complex and realized not to be worthy of yet another story.

The Grimrose Girls
by Laura Pohl
Pub. Date. Nov. 2. Sourcebooks Fire

LGBTQUIA, Teens & YA There is magic as well as mysterious death afoot at the Grimrose Académie. Like Hogwarts, the Grimrose is a residential boarding school with students who are predominantly teenagers. But there the likenesses between to the two schools disappears Without there being a suggestion of ‘token individuals’ Pohl presents the reader with a cast of characters who differ in social backgrounds financial standing, home environments, racial identification, ethnic identification, gender identification and gender orientation. There are mysteries, deaths and dangers, and throughout the book the characters respond in ways that are true to young adults struggling with questions of their own identities, their relationships with friends and family and, indeed, with themselves.

The mystery plot is both fresh and deeply intertwined with more traditional stories of youngsters, primarily female. Indeed the reader will likely finish the book with an appetite to learn more about old European folk tales. The multiple protagonists have clear and clearly individual voices. The ending both delivers on the quest of uncover the reasons so many students at the Grimrose are dying and leaves the reader hoping that Pohl has already written the next book, the book that takes us even deeper into the magic of the Grimrose and the lives of the characters we have met.

I am NOT the intended audience of this book but it won me over. How much more would a member of that intended audience enjoy the book? There is only one way of finding out.

 

In Praise of Old(er) Books: Part 2

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The Handmaid’s Tale: A Tale of Two Handmaids

OR

Offred’s Narrative and June’s Adventures

Rereading a book after watching/hearing/being exposed to an adaptation of the original can yield insights into both versions of the work.

What struck me on my latest rereading of Margaret Atwoords’ The Handmaid’s Tale?”

Without passing judgment on the recent television adaptation of Atwood’s novel, I implore anyone who has not yet read the book to READ THE BOOK before seeing either television or movie adaptations.

A well-made television series or movie can stamp on the minds of the audience a version/vision of the story so definitive that it is almost impossible for audience members to form their own independent images of the characters, places and plots of the original written work. (I first read the book mumble, mumble decades ago and yet, on my most recent reread, Aunt Lydia spoke with the voice of Ann Dowd.)

In the television series, we (and others) soon learn the ‘old world’ name by which Offred was once known, June. In Atwood’s book we never learn what her “before name” had been, and she pointedly never reveals it to anyone. For the rest of this piece I will refer to the Handmaid portrayed by Elisabeth Moss in the television series as June and the Handmaid whose narrative we read in Atwood’s book as Offred.

There are key and telling differences between June and Offred.

As Kit Whitfield writes in her analysis of the first line of the book  

… Offred is both an intimate narrator and a reduced one, just one speck in a whole society. Even in her first sentence, nameless Offred is part of a ‘we,’ at the mercy of others — even her creator. It’s the tension between the vividness of human experience and the cool wit of social commentary that creates so compelling a dystopia. If not even your author will grant you a solo spotlight, and not even you can speak of your experience in the first person singular, you are lost indeed.

Whitfield, Kit. “First sentences: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood.” November 28, 2011

The television series attempts to ‘liven things’ and open them up. It takes Offred out of the limited environment (physical and emotional) she inhabits in the book, allowing that audience to see the differences between Gilead and our world. Effectively, the Offred of the book is NOT the June/Offred of the television series.

Offred says of her narrative, “I wish it showed me in a better light, if not happier, then at least more active, less hesitant, less distracted by trivia. I wish it had more shape. I wish it more about love, or sudden realizations important to one’s life, or even about sunsets, birds, rainstorms, or snow.” (Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale, Fawcett, 1985. p 343)

The television show is the story of June, a former wife, mother and worker. It is the story of what she does, how she responds, and how she fights back. It is a story of action and active attempts at self redemption.

The book is a Vermeer, a study in interiors. Offred is reactive, not active. She chooses NOT to share her name from the ‘before times’ with the putative audience or with other characters in the narrative. She positions herself not just as an unreliable narrator but working from an unreliable memory. She is unmoored (purposely, by the very society she inhabits) from anything that would ground her in ‘the facts of the world.” She looks forward to the glimpses of news she sees in Serena’s sitting room without believing the accuracy of any of the reports.

June is an active agent. She does things, she confronts. The Serena Joy of the television series is also an active agent, someone who took part in the planning and execution of the coup that initiated Gilead and the designing of its laws and social structures. Moira in the television show is an active agent, fighting back against the system and escaping to the promised land of Canada. She attempts to change things. Rather than being shown as an active participant in the creation of Gilead, the Serena Joy of the book is older, arthritic, spending her time gardening, smoking and socializing with other wives. And the Canada of the television series is a promised land for its current citizens to be proud of, receiving Gileadean refugees with almost openly defiant arms.

All of these are different in the book. Of Canada, the ‘scholars from the future’ describe Canada’s stance quite differently from that envisaged in the TV series. As they discuss the ultimate fate of Offred, “it remains obscure. Was she smuggled over the border of Gilead, into what was then Canada, and did she make her way thence to England? This would have been wise, as the Canada of that time did not wish to antagonize its powerful neighbor, and there were roundups and extraditions of such refugees.

I am not arguing that people should not watch the television series or that it does not have something to offer that the book does not. I am arguing that the book and television series differ so fundamentally that one can argue that that they are the tales of Two Handmaids, both called at one point in their life, Offred.

Or one could argue that both the book and the television series are works of science fiction and each of them takes place in an alternative timeline to our own.

Atwood’s book is not diminished nor made redundant by the existence of the television series. For those who would like to to explore the similarities and differences between the two, argue with me as to my conclusions or simply enjoy Atwood’s writing the book (along with critiques and analyses) is available in a variety of formats at the Chatham-Kent Public Library as are DVDs of the television. Those who would prefer to own a copy of the book an purchase it through Kobo.com. A purchase through this link supports Turns & Tales.

— Maggie Young

In Praise of Older Books: Part 1

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The Godfather: From Mass Market[1] to “Masterpiece”[2]

In the late 1930s, a young woman from rural New Brunswick crossed the border to the United States. She was going to Yonkers (near New York City) to work for distant relatives and their acquaintances as a maid of all work. (Marjorie had gone to normal school[3] and was a qualified teacher, but there was little work for her in the Maritimes and what work there was paid poorly.)

What did she make of New York coming from a subsistence farm, with no electricity and door ‘indoor’ plumbing consisting of a pump in the kitchen?

The New York that awaited her was the New York in which Mario Puzo grew up and, according to “The Godfather,” the city where Vito Corleone was ascending to become a mafia don while his sons, Michael, Santino (Sonny) and Fredo (Freddie) were going to school. Meanwhile Johnny Fontane was trying to break into the music business.

Like anyone who works as a servant, lives in rooms over someone else’s garage, lives in cheap boarding houses with meagre meals… Marjorie heard the gossip. Since she was a Maritime girl, born and bred, she was not greatly impressed by what she later described to those listening to her adventures as ‘Sicilian braggadocio[4].’  She listened, and she came to her own conclusions.

When, decades later, The Godfather was published, Marjorie was not a fan of the book. She argued that it mythologized a nasty reality, the stark reality that in prewar New York the police did little to provide justice and protection for the various ethnic and immigrant communities. Consequently, those communities created their own parallel police and justice structures. However, unlike the Italian immigrants depicted in the book, what most of these communities did NOT do is create a self-sustaining system such as the mafia that delayed or waylaid the socialization and assimilation of immigrants.

Ironically, while members of the mafia, as portrayed in the book, resisted the Americanization of their community, their behaviour had similarities to the American culture they appeared to reject. Specifically, the celebration of the rebel and demonization of authority. Notably this celebration seldom included any “Robin Hood-esque” egalitarian undercurrent.

Most people didn’t agree with Marjorie. The Godfather was a best seller… transforming a heretofore shadowy subculture in the United States to an interesting clan with their own secret signs and symbols. The movie, in turn, not only popularized the book; it also stands on own. The film is a masterpiece of adaptation—to a large degree stripping off those portions of the book that were most unpalatable to the general public and Americanizing what was in its essence a Sicilian story. Part of the film’s genius was in casting choices. The Tom Hagen of the book was German-Irish in background so it was unremarkable to cast Robert Duvall to play that role, but much of the other casting is severely against stereotype. Marlon Brando, the titular Godfather, was born in Nebraska and was of German-Irish-English, Huguenot and Dutch roots. James Caan, whose parents were German-Jewish was cast as Sonny Corleone, the Godfather’s oldest son.

These hires allowed the film to both strongly stereotype the main characters as typical Sicilians and, at the same time, back away from such stereotyping by casting as three of its four principal leads actors who were not associated with Italy or the Italian culture.

I personally do not find the book The Godfather that enjoyable, although the fact that it sat for months at the top of the New York Times best seller list indicates that is not a widely shared feeling. I think the movie improved on the book by shaving off elements that were excessively stereotypical or repetitive. The book is laced with racism and misogyny, even for a book of that time. The movie rasps the rough edge off both.

Finally, for those who don’t know, the character of Johnny Fontane (whose desire for a job in Hollywood led to the famous “made him an offer he couldn’t refuse” scene in the film) was a major character in the book, but was for the most part excised from the film. The rumour was that this character was based on Frank Sinatra (who was of Italian background from Hoboken), and around whose head the rumours of being mobbed up always revolved.

Famously, Sinatra confronted Puzo at one point, angry about the way in which he was depicted in the book. Marjorie’s theory was that, based on the rumours she had heard in New York in 1938, what made Sinatra truly angry was not the implication that he was involved with the mob, but that his defining characteristic had been given to Sonny Corleone rather than to Johnny Fontane.

So what do YOU think? Have you read the book? Seen any of The Godfather movies? What do you think of the casting? Do you think the film made a masterpiece out of potboiler?

Both the movie The Godfather and The Godfather 2 will be available on Netflix Canada until the end of August. The book is available in e-book form from Kobo.com and Libro.fm carries the audiobook. Both links support Turns & Tales.

— Maggie Young

[1]     Puzo, Mario. The Godfather. (1972) London: Heinemann. 

[2]     Coppola, F. F. (1972). The Godfather. Paramount Pictures

[3]     A post secondary school institution that trained high school graduates to teach in elementary and secondary schools. Those who have read Anne of Green Gables will have a sense of the difficulty of becoming a licensed teacher in an area with no regular high school from which to graduate.

[4]     She had gone to a one room school with no plumbing or electricity but she had a vocabulary that was both extensive and useful.

In praise of WHICH older(er) books?

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Earlier, I wrote:

Starting next week Turns & Tales will post a write-up of a book or short story that has been adapted to film or TV in an easily accessible form and whose original book/short story in available in e-book and/or audiobook form through one of our affiliates. We hope you enjoy this series as much as we have enjoyed putting it together.

and now I have a question for our readers…..Do you think that I should include Homer’s “The Iliad” in my list of books that have been adapted to movies/TV shows?

The most recent easily accessible movie adaptation is Troy, currently on Netflix. The Iliad is available with a choice of translators from our affiliates. Kobo offers multiple translations in ebook and audiobook form. Libro.fm offers a choice of four different narrators for the audiobook version of The Iliad.

— Maggie Young

Photo by Ana Municio on Unsplash

In praise of old(er) books

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For many people, their awareness of books is limited to ‘horserace/sports’ coverage or quasi official imprimaturs of value and seriousness.

The latter are the books generally assigned in high school and undergraduate courses. These are the books that we are ‘supposed to’ have read and which have an apparently official seal of worth and interpretation. This, then, is the CANON.

The former are the books that even those who don’t read books and aren’t interested in books learn about through the sheer weight of media coverage. Sometimes that coverage is driven by the newsworthy quality of the ‘discovery’ of the author, sometimes the books are noteworthy because of the size of the advance given the author, or the length and value of deal(s) associated with it. Sometimes they merit headlines because of the notoriety and/or gravitas of the director/producer who has optioned the book for a movie or TV series. What is seldom discussed is the quality of the writing or its pro (or anti) social value.

What about the books that were big news last month but no one is talking about today? The books that were not particularly newsworthy two years ago, were briefly front and centre in the news when a major studio optioned them but which are now forgotten (as books) even by those who saw the film/tv show?

What about the many books that are published every year, some to be adapted years later (consider the decades between the publication of Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale” and the beginning of the current TV/streaming production.)

Yet those are the books that, in my opinion, can deliver the most fun while reading. Whether or not you like the book itself (the plot or the style) you are likely to have an opinion about the wisdom of optioning it, the decisions made by the producers/studio. Do you agree with Jackson’s decision to omit Tom Bombadil from his “Lord of the Rings” trilogy? Do you agree with casting decisions? (Really? Stephen Moyer as Bill Compton in True Blood?) Do you think it helped or hurt the story to move it to another time (King’s IT was firmly rooted in an earler time than the recent two part movie.) And what do you think about moving the story not only from one time to another but from one continent to another (as in the case of the most recent remake of Wells’ The War of the Worlds?)

Notice that there are no right answers to any of these questions. You (and your friends/family) can watch the film/show, read the book and swap opinions, criticisms (and witticisms.) You can learn a lot about others (and yourself) from the ways in which you understand, enjoy and critique books and movies. And, face it, it is always fun to second guess the decisions of famous well-paid people.

Starting next week Turns & Tales will post a write-up of a book or short story that has been adapted to film or TV in an easily accessible form and whose original book/short story in available in e-book and/or audiobook form through one of our affiliates. We hope you enjoy this series as much as we have enjoyed putting it together.

— Maggie Young