Posted June 26, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Question Tuesday / 0 Comments
“Never judge a book by its movie” – J.W. Eagan
I’m not sure if I’ve seen a movie that I liked more than the book. I know if I read American Psycho before seeing the movie I might have enjoyed it more. I think there are plenty of examples of books I didn’t enjoy because I saw the movie first. Others include Psycho by Robert Bloch and Limitless by Alan Glynn. There are a few movies that I enjoyed more than the books, like The Bone Collector by Jeffery Deaver, The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson and The Hunter by Richard Stark (Payback, 1999) There are books I thought were average and I would rather invest 2 hours watching the movie than 8 or more hours reading the books. Even if the movies turned out bad, it was still less of an investment than reading the book.
Graphic novels seem to be the best at being adapted to movies. Ghost World by Daniel Clowes, Sin City by Frank Miller, Kick Ass by Mark Millar and V for Vendetta, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Watchman by Alan Moore all seem to be good examples of that. While all these graphic novels are decent, I prefer the movies over the books. I’m sure many people will disagree with this but that’s my opinion. What movies do people prefer over the books?
While we are on the topic of Movie Adaptions; one of the things I hate most about them, is when the cover of the books change to match the movie posters or even the name of the book changing to match. I really hate owning a book with the movie name or cover on it but sometimes there is just no getting away from it.
Posted August 10, 2010 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Literature / 4 Comments
I’ve heard a bit of talk about metafiction lately and to be honest I wasn’t sure what it was. The dictionary defines it as; fiction that discusses, describes, or analyses a work of fiction or the conventions of fiction. That didn’t really help me with understanding the concept in greater detail. After further investigations I found the most common types of metafiction and some examples of each one;
- A novel about a writer creating a story (A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man).
- A novel about a reader reading a novel (The Princess Bride)
- A novel which features itself as its own prop or McGuffin (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)
- A novel within the novel (The Man in the High Castle, Sophie’s World or The Princess Bride).
- A novel wherein the author (not merely the narrator) is a character (Breakfast of Champions or Slaughterhouse Five)
- A non-linear novel, which can be read in any order other than from beginning to end (Finnegans Wake).
- Merging characters or elements from diverse works of fiction into a new fictional scenario (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen)
There are many more scenarios of metafiction out there and the more you think about it the more books start to fit. I just though I would give some examples so you can better understand metafiction too. If you have some interesting examples of metafiction please feel free to let me know.
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