A Midsummer Night's Epic Confusion

I just spent the morning helping my little sis with her homework - namely, summarising the narrative nightmare that is William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. The biggest issue is the love quadrangle between the four idiots - uh, I mean protagonists - of the play. Basically, in short: Lysander loves Hermia who is supposed to marry Demetrius who is adored by Helena whom Lysander gets potioned to love as does Demetrius then both girls freak out but Puck depotions Lysander and they all live happily ever after. Got that?

No? Okay, here's a diagram, borrowed from this very helpful page:

Ayup.

The astute reader may note that Demetrius is still potioned to love Helena at the end. In other words, he's been mind controlled to love someone against his will. I find it hard to think of this as a happy ending, frankly. What happens if the potion's effects have an expiry date? And even if they don't, can Helena be happy knowing (as she seems to suspect in one of the final scenes) that Demetrius' love isn't quite genuine? And what about poor mind-controlled Demetrius? In short, Oberon is a jerk.

Mind you, do we have the right to expect a genuine happy ending from the man who wrote Macbeth, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Othello and all the rest? Didn't think so.

Captain Blood

The story of Peter Blood is one I've been familiar with for a while, mostly due to the fabulous black and white film adaptation starring Errol Flynn. I took the opportunity to reread Rafael Sabatini's original for the first time in several years today, however, and the differences between the book and the film stand out strongly. Therefore, today's post shall not be a review of Captain Blood (though I may, eventually, write one), but an analysis of what Hollywood tends to do when adapting books for the silver screen. Or at least used to do - my conscience forces me to admit that the film was made in 1935, and their habits may have improved.

But I doubt it.


Step One: Strip out half the interesting content. 


A good third of Sabatini's original novel covers the exploits of Captain Blood as he terrorises the Caribbean. It's really great stuff - admittedly, Sabatini nicked half his exploits from real life buccaneer Henry Morgan, but at least he has the guts to indirectly admit it within the text. Not only is this what guys really want out of an adventure story - I know that my younger brother, for one, would much rather read about that sacking of Maracaibo than he would about Peter pining for Arabella Bishop - but it provides a valuable, hands-on depiction of how good a pirate Peter Blood really is. It follows the age-old rule of show, not tell - show us why Peter's crew will remain loyal no matter what, show us why his name's feared throughout the Caribbean Sea, and show us how awesome he is in action.

In the film, we get a montage of battle scenes with some very melodramatic silent-era-style captions informing us that he's "carving out a crimson career". He then spends the rest of the film being emo over Arabella, with only one fight scene. Uh? I admit that putting it all in would have made the film an hour longer, but considering that the similar-era epic Gone With the Wind was so popular and the length of the modern Lord of the Rings films, I don't think anyone would have minded much. 

That wasn't the only content that was cut, which leads me to ...

Step Two: Combine or cut characters - sometimes rather important ones. 


In the novel, Sir Julian Wade is a young, handsome diplomat who offers Peter a commission in the navy (which Peter very promptly ditches, but it's the thought that counts), provides romantic competition and therefore a target for jealousy, and is later yet another antagonist. You could say he's rather an important character, right? But in the film, they combined him with Lord Willoughby, a character who does exist in the book but is an elderly emissary who shows up to tell everyone that James II has been deposed. Bang goes any romantic competition. (They also dropped Peter leaving Port Royal, instead having him become governor directly after receiving the commission instead of months later after a brief return to piracy.)

And because we can't have a girl for Arabella to hate when Peter's rival has been cut, the French governor's daughter, whose name escapes me right now, was deemed unnecessary as well. Instead, Arabella replaces her as the young lady whom Peter must save from Levasseur, and Lord Willoughby replaces her brother (so that's three characters combined to make the Willoughby of the film). Admittedly, it's more dramatic when it's Arabella in danger, but the whole point was that Peter would fight to save the innocent when he had no thought of personal gain. That's one of the reasons Arabella loves him in the book, and by making her the one in distress instead of having Peter save a girl he doesn't care about, it lessens the whole "selfless heroism" aspect that was the point of the scene in the first place.

Interestingly, the film put far more spotlight on characters that are barely in the book: such as Governor Steed, who has about three lines in Sabatini's original, and Mr. Nuttall, who disappears as soon as Peter sets sail. Both of these are comic relief characters - so, basically, 1930s Hollywood valued comedy over drama and artistic integrity. Unsurprising, but vaguely tragic all the same.

Step Three: Simplify anything complex about the protagonist. 


In the book, Peter Blood is an emotionally complex character who gets mad unjustifiably, spends months in a pretty much constant state of drunkenness, and goes along with plans he knows are wrong simply because he can't be bothered interceding. He even cries when his beloved ship sinks. Not even Jim Kirk or Jack Sparrow were man enough to do that.

In the film, Peter Blood is a heroic hero who does heroic stuff. He doesn't actually do anything wrong (although he does attack English ships though the Peter of the book does not) and is generally heroic. Wait, I think I may have mentioned that already. And he certainly doesn't cry. While he's very entertaining to watch, he's not nearly as complex or believable as a man.

That, and they severally diminished the Irishness, which is very sad.

Step Four: Still, somehow, manage to make it awesome. 


The film is not Rafael Sabatini's Captain Blood. It's an uber-distilled, hugely simplified version that, if you squint sideways, looks a bit like the book. Yet it's very enjoyable for what it is - a swashbuckler rather along the lines of Errol Flynn's version of Robin Hood - and is definitely on my list of favourite movies.

But I like the novel best and, sometimes, I wish someone would do a more faithful adaptation. I've stopped trusting Hollywood. How about ITV? Oh, no, wait, they did almost exactly the same thing to Hornblower.

Forget it. I'll just curl up with a book.

The Time Traveller's Wife

I had this plan. I was going to read one hundred pages of The Time Traveller's Wife this afternoon, then write. Before I knew it, it was page one hundred and fourteen. I forced myself to stop and do some novel planning, then I read more. Then I made dinner, and read more. And then I kept reading, freezing, in the semi-dark in an empty living room with everyone else gone to bed because I could not put that book down.

I could, of course, dissect this story and analyse it. It's science fiction, it's first-person present tense from two viewpoints, it's got a timeline that would give Steven Moffat headaches, etcetera. Audrey Niffenegger is a master of foreshadowing, and it shows. It has some absolutely genius metaphors and similes, a plot that must have taken hours to plan, and an absolutely gutwrenching last one hundred pages. I haven't cried over a book since Good Wives when I was twelve, but this time I came pretty close. But I'm not going to pull it apart and discuss it in a freshman essay, because I think that would spoil it.

Like all books, however, it wasn't perfect. The quotes and literary allusions got very tedious, particularly since I only understood about a third. I skimread all the long arty descriptive paragraphs about how Clare does ... whatever it is she does with paper that everyone goes on about. Also, as a fan of the relatively family-friendly movie adaptation (saw it about six months ago), I was rather shocked at the startling quantity of sex scenes and foul language. Or perhaps my memory is just blocking those parts of the film out. I might have to watch it again.

I can see, frankly, why The Time Traveller's Wife is so insanely popular. It deserves to be a modern classic, that's for sure. I wonder if, were I to travel right now to 2311, I would find it in the classics section of the library like a Shakespeare? Possibly. Only time will tell.

The Birthmark

Most American high school students would know something of Nathaniel Hawthorne; I freely admit that I am neither American nor particularly familiar with his work. I did, I admit, study him in my last year of high school, but it was more an analysis of his sentence structure and style than themes, mainly because I found his themes downright depressing. I've never read The Scarlet Letter and I've never studied any more deeply into his body of work than was required to pass English. I was only too happy to wash my hands of one of the most bleak authors of the nineteenth century when the year was out.

Yet, bizarrely, this afternoon, I found myself reading "The Birthmark" again. It is, like most of his work, a short story: irritatingly introspective and self-aware, with an omniscient narrator and moral lessons that drop on your head like an anvil. It is, essentially, science fiction, with a Gothic, almost steampunk feel. (I like Hawthorne a lot more now that I'm thinking of him as steampunk, actually.) A scientist, married to a near-perfect woman, becomes fixated on removing her one defect (the titular birthmark) and in doing so, kills her. I've never been fond of what my mum would call "worthy" stories - things like Lord of the Flies where everything is deeply symbolic, according to the professors, and important moral lessons are shoved in your face. I hasten to point out that I'm not opposed to moral lessons in stories - far from it - but they have to be a bit more subtle than Hawthorne. He has a tendency to basically spell the moral out, and "The Birthmark" is no exception.

But for all that, it's still enjoyable. Hawthorne's command of the English language is incredible, no matter what I might think of his philosophies or methods of delivering them. Some paragraphs are a joy to read. His style of descriptive language is a bit verbose for my tastes, however, and it's a hard slog getting through some of the walls of text without skimreading. And you'd have to have a very hard heart not to feel sorry for Georgiana.

I won't be delving back into Hawthorne any time soon, but "The Birthmark" wasn't a wasted effort. Now, please excuse me while I go and write a self-insert fanfic where I slap Aylmer in the face.

Prince of the Blood, Redux

Whatever redux means. I've never quite understood that.

I finished Raymond E. Feist's Prince of the Blood this morning, and, frankly, it did not grow on me much. The prose remained comfortably mediocre, but at least understandable. Towards the end there was less setting and more battles, which was great as Feist's battle scenes are fantastic (no pun intended), but the piles of political intrigue between characters the majority of which had only been mentioned twice took a while to sift through. Perhaps a diagram of the Keshian court structure would have been as useful as the map.

One thing Feist did particularly nicely, and something I will have to learn from, was how starkly he differentiated the two cultures. The Keshians weren't just a clone of those of the Kingdom with darker skin and more sand in their backyards: they had an utterly different value system, a distinct set of clashing cultures within the Empire, and bizarre little quirks that, while unimportant, clashed brilliantly with the actions of the protagonists. Half the setting details in Kesh were completely unimportant, but that was okay as they served their purpose: namely, helping our twin protagonists develop by forcing them to experience a world utterly unlike their own. Which taught them important lessons about leadership and they go home responsible men, etcetera. I must admit I was missing the rash redheads by the last four hundred pages. There is, as a matter of fact, such a thing as too much character development. But back to the point of this paragraph: nice culture clash. Even if the high ratio of unnecessarily scantily clad women made me feel like this was Star Trek: The Fantasy Series. FYI, fantasy writers: you cannot justify blatant objectification of women by "cultural differences". It just makes me even madder.

As I mentioned earlier, his battle scenes are also lovely. (Can you say that about battle scenes?) I am particularly fond of desert environments, and the bandit attack on the group in the middle of the sandstorm was all that I could wish for. Unfortunately, while there were plenty of fight scenes later in the book, the climax was all resolved by the two things I dislike most about fantasy novels: politics and magic. Not to spoiler, but I think bringing a character with magic powers to resolve things the protagonists could have done on their own is one big cop-out. Sorry, Feist, but there will not be any magic cop-outs in my novel. Nuh-uh.

And don't give me the "there is no magic" line, either! That was poorly set up and hopelessly explained and lampshaded when it was finally paid off, and I saw which character it would be directed to a mile away.

Since I feel the need to complain about various plot points, I shall now air my very spoilerful list of grievances. Do not read any further if you have not read Prince of the Blood.

1. Love at first sight. I hate it as a plot point in general, liked James as a character, and was infuriated when the Sueish Gamina showed up and was apparently his one true soulmate purely because she could read his mind. It felt like I was reading some warped distorted version of Twilight. And that, my friends, is not a good thing. To be fair, Gamina did grow on me, but only when she started being useful. If only she'd been useful first, then fallen madly in love with Jimmy, I'd like this book all the more. 
2. Characters picking up the infamous idiot ball and throwing my willing suspension of disbelief out the window. Do not expect me to believe, Mr. Feist, that Borric would gamble away his sword before riding through a bandit-infested desert. You've informed me that he's been a solider for the past few years; he has more common sense than that. 
3. Obvious plot "twists". I saw the culprit coming the moment he was introduced. Any character constantly described as reasonable and peacemaking has got to be a wannabe dictator planning a coup. The obvious villain is just a red-herring. Any reader with an inch of genre-savviness knows this. 
4. The very transparent bridge dropped on Locklear. 

Believe it or not, however, I enjoyed Prince of the Blood. It is a fairly terrible novel, with a lot more to dislike than like, but it's also an exciting story and quite a thrill ride. With some lovely desert landscapes. I wouldn't recommend it, but I've definitely learned something from reading it. 

Prince of the Blood

I have never particularly liked fantasy literature. I have never read a single Harry Potter book, flee from Twilight as if it has rabies (I now have interesting mental pictures of rabid vampires), and the delights of Prachett and Tolkien remain largely unknown to me. Since my latest story concept requires a certain amount of fantasy worldbuilding, however, I have decided to make a foray into the genre. My first attempt: Raymond E. Feist's Prince of the Blood, chosen solely because it was the first interesting-looking fantasy novel I saw at the library this morning. The F section is right there near the entrance and I was in a hurry. 

One hundred and fifteen pages in, as of a few hours ago, and I am not engrossed. I am, however, enjoying it to a certain extent. The antics of a pair of ginger twin princes are entertaining, if occasionally irritating, and remind me oddly of some of Georgette Heyer's young heroes. I suppose what she writes is not so far from fantasy, anyway. I get the impression, with all the politics and characters mentioned, that I've dived right into the middle of a larger series; Wikipedia confirms that this is the case. Luckily, Feist is kind enough to provide exposition for the newbies. 

There's a map before the prologue, which is slightly intimidating, but it's proven extremely useful in that I've been forced to go back to it several times to check facts. That is probably a bad thing, but I'm not sure if it reflects on me or the novel. The geography, culture and politics are beautifully detailed, almost certainly a side-effect of setting a long series in one word. Descriptions are vivid, although the prose could be smoother in places. When the second sentence sets me cringing, it's not a good sign. 

What's really driving me insane right now, though, is the names. James is fine, Locklear I can handle, Borric and Erland are pushing it slightly, and Pug sends me directly over the edge. I cannot read a scene with him in without bursting out laughing, which is not a good reaction to provoke in your reader when referring to an elderly, wise gentleman, magic powers or no. Feist also has a habit of beginning every chapter with a snappy one sentence paragraph, which is effective the first time, and becomes decidedly tedious around chapter five. 

I'll definitely finish the book. I'm enjoying the idea of the hopefully impending desert fight scenes too much to abandon it now, despite my desire to slap Borric around the head and change Pug's name by deed poll.