Reflection 7

The appeal of a memoir is that every event described within the text actually occurred. There’s no way to justify the fabrication or altering of any event, no matter how minute the impact may be. The distinction between nonfiction and fiction isn’t flexible, and is relatively limpid compared to the dictations of most other genres. A book is a piece of nonfiction if the events described are factual, not if only most are true.

                In the case of memoirs, people expect to be told a tale from the first-hand prospective of the author. While other pieces of nonfiction may rely on accounts from various individuals, because the events may be somewhat unclear, memoirs are without this burden because the story is told from the prospective of the same person who experienced these events directly; people expect the truth because of this. Omitting the absolute truth, for whatever reason one may conjure up, abolishes the book’s status as someone’s memoir. People read fiction if they want to read about events that were specifically crafted out of nothing that characters experienced, and people read memoirs to read about factual events that a real person experienced.

Reflection 6

                Over the years, I’ve found genre to be a taste that’s regarded almost subconsciously in my case. I’ve never felt any feelings of distinct or tangible attraction towards any genre or subgenre, but instead I’ve observed that I tend to feel more motivation to read the next page when I take a sincere interest in the protagonist. Whether or not the protagonist lives on a space station, in a castle, or in the slums is irrelevant to me, so long as I care about what happens next to him.

                There are a few traits that I look for in characters. I abhor the stereotypical “heroic” character, because I find that if I can’t bring myself to actually believe they would survive what just happens, then the value of the character has deteriorated; I’m not one to suspend my disbelief. This also includes all “chosen one” characters; that being said, I approve of characters who adhere to the credentials of an “Average Joe”. I like to read about a character who can get beat down, who doesn’t have to survive the next risky situation, because then the experience of reading about him feels much more genuine.

                I don’t encourage writers to tell the story of “Average Joe”, like I may have implied. I want to see a human being the character—someone who isn’t extraordinary or clairvoyant, but someone who’s also made into an individual by their own unique faults, quirks, and history. This can cover all genres, because I don’t need to connect or see myself in them, like so many other readers claim.  

                 

Review #1 - Fight Club

Everyone's seen the film adaption of "Fight Club". It's easily one of the most recognizable novel-to-film adaptions and represents, to directors, what they need to accomplish to successfully transform a novel into a movie. Several scenes and lines in the film are regarded as some of the most well-done sequences in film making, but there was more than a few scenes from the novel that didn't make the cut.

One of these scenes is when the narrator is originally introduced to Tyler. In the film, they meet on a plane after the narrator has slept, which was done because of the link between Tyler's character and sleep. In the novel, we're introduced to Tyler on a nude beach, where the narrator sits alone and watches Tyler as he arranges a series of logs to create a sculptor. The narrator asks Tyler if he's an artist, after denying this he explains that what he's created was a replica of a giant mechanical hand, and that for one minute the angle of the shadow was absolutely perfectly aligned while he sat in the palm of it. While the scene may have been difficult to do right, I think it would've gone down in history as one of the best sequences in the history of film.

Another scene revolves around an important interaction between Marla and the Narrator. Until Tyler's cast of workers has built up, it's never really explained where he obtains all of the fat to make his soap. In the novel, there's a long scene where it's revealed that Marla's mother is a frequent patient of liposuction, and ships the left-over fat to her daughter so that she can buy collagen injections that will last longer than animal fat. She eventually finds out that Tyler has been stealing the fat to make soap. A long fight ensues, and more depth is poured into Marla's character as a result; we seldom see such a materialistic side of her, and it's refreshing when it does come out.

--Spoiler warning--

Finally, the ending. The one complaint I had with the entire movie. Tyler is a part of the Narrator. I've never been able to understand how the Narrator was able to kill Tyler without killing himself to, especially in the context that it occurred in the movie. The novel had a much more fitting ending where it wasn't required to suspend your disbelief-- the Narrator survives the shot, which only tears open his cheek, and is transported to a mental hospital. Tyler never died, because Tyler can't be killed unless the Narrator is killed as well. If they wanted to defy the ending of the novel, then I would have at least liked to see Tyler survive if the Narrator would as well.

Reflection 5

The first book cover that instantly comes to my mind is the edition of "The Catcher in the Rye" that's famously bloated with some of the most intense motifs from the novel itself. The reason that I find it so memorable isn’t because it necessarily popped out when I first saw it, but because of how cleverly designed it seemed after reading through the book and identifying the individual parts of the cover. What originally seemed to be a few colorful images of menial objects in the book turned out to be a much more significant illustration of some of the book’s most prominent themes, linked together in one image.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that all book covers need to borrow from this business model; book covers follow very few specific credentials, and leave so much room for the artists to get as creative as they want. It doesn’t need to be fraught with the book’s most important symbolic imagery, and in most cases it’s probably better not to, because few will understand it. A visual representation of a single scene can do a book just as much justice as the cover of the Catcher in the Rye, so long as it’s designed to draw people to look at the back. The Catcher's cover designed to be memorable, not to pop out like most covers should.  

Reflection 4 - Film adaptions

Movie adaptions of books have always been subject to much scrutiny to fans of the original novel, as well as critics. The transition from a piece of work that relies largely upon an individual's own interpretation of the story to a piece of work that relies solely upon one person's interpretation is difficult to create, but there has been several note-worthy adaptions that are all deserving of much praise:

1) Fight Club
2) Jarhead
3) The Green Mile
4) Silence of the Lambs
5) The Shining

The reason these five movies have done so well has little to do with the content of the original book. We've seen books that are widely accepted as genius fail as they're turned into film, but the reason for this isn't because the material they were working with was sub-par, it's the fault of the director and the actors. A key component of the movie industry revolves around the originality of a film-- this is absent in adaptions. The plot, the characters, the setting, and key events have all already been imagined and published, but it's the job of the director and the actors to turn this into something else; this has, so to speak, spawned another movie industry, which revolves completely around the abilities of the actors, and the imagination of the director.

These five films did more than re-enact the book, they added another layer to it, something that was impossible to find in the original books. They played the scenes you're familiar with (and occasionally new ones), but they added emotion and new depth in that couldn't have been done without the aid of the director's own immagination and the talent of the actors involved. An old saying exists that says "a picture paints a thousand words", and this is a true statement; the challenge with making an adaption, though, is that these thousand words need to offer a unique and well-crafted prospective of the events that we read.