I'm a reasonably literate man and yet there are times when I feel pretty illiterate. There's so much good work written by so many dead writers, how does one find time -- especially a writer with one's own work to do -- to scratch the surface of it all? I was reminded of this yesterday when I picked up a short novel by Rebecca West, The Return of the Soldier, and started reading. What a fine book! A stellar story concept, executed nicely. Published in 1918. I'll have more to say about it later.
As I was reading, I thought, what a fine movie this would make! I should write the screenplay. I snooped around and, of course, it already came out as a movie in 1982, starring Julie Christie and Glenda Jackson and was nominated for an award. I'll check it out. I may still adapt it, however, perhaps to a modern setting. The story is timeless. Plot summary from Wikipedia:
Set during World War I on an isolated country estate just outside London, Rebecca West's haunting novel The Return of the Soldier follows Chris Baldry, a shell-shocked captain suffering from amnesia, as he makes a bittersweet homecoming to the three women who have helped shape his life. Will the devoted wife he can no longer recollect, the favorite cousin he remembers only as a childhood friend, and the poor innkeeper's daughter he once courted leave Chris to languish in a safe, dreamy past--or will they help him recover his memory so that he can return to the front? The answer is revealed through a heartwrenching, unexpected sacrifice.
This is why I'm so impatient with popular literature, which is almost always plot driven -- what Graham Greene called "entertainments." I don't go to books to be entertained, although I don't want to be bored. I go to books to learn something about the human condition and to be prompted to reflect about my own life, beliefs and values.
The artists I admire most -- fiction writers like Graham Greene, playwrights like Durrenmatt, screenwriters like Harold Pinter -- manage to infuse a character-driven story with a highly suspenseful forward driving plot, a read that is both entertaining and enlightening. These books are hard to write and therefore are rare. Durrenmatt's play The Physicists, for example, which is both a gripping murder mystery and a reflection on the moral responsibility of scientists in our dangerous world. Durrenmatt gets the best of both worlds, and I admire the achievement. Have I ever done the same? I'm not sure. Probably not, though perhaps I've been close a few times. Nothing close to the achievement above, however. But I keep trying.
2 comments:
We saw Durrenmatt's play "The Visit," directed by Kenneth Albers at OFS in 2004: a stunning production.
Albers starred on Portland Center Stage's production of Shaw's "Misalliance" this season. He is as talented an actor as he is a director.
Interesting. I saw the same OSF production and absolutely hated it. It wasn't Durrenmatt: it was the director. The Durrentmatt play is stark and poetic, a real minimalist theatrical poetry at work, that I regard as essential to its meaning. Much of the script -- the poetry of the human trees, for example -- was cut. I despise this production as the worst I've seen of my favorite playwright!
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