Random Bibliographic Musings #2

When people all read the same book, they imagine different scenes in their heads with completely unique visuals. If several hundred thousand people read the same novel, there are as many versions of it residing in readers’ imaginations. That’s pretty fantastic when you think about it. Each individual’s rendition is like a thumbprint, only no one else can see it. There are millions of ideas about, say, Robert Langdon’s appearance floating in the ether.

This of course, gets tainted horribly when a film is made of a book. In such cases you get to crawl into the director’s brain for his interpretation of the text, but it’s only one of millions. If you see the celluloid version first, you can’t help but insert the images from the film into your own mental picture. That’s why I always start with the book. Even if the storyline doesn’t quite match, you take the face of the actor and transpose it onto your personal set. I experienced this with the Harry Potter books/movies and can never go back.

Leaving film, people change their snapshots of characters as they read. You could picture a tall, slender, blond girl, and then fifty pages into the book be told by the author that she is actually dark-haired and chubby. The reader then makes a subconscious choice: you either stick to your image which you may prefer, or remain true to the text and the author’s intention. I often have trouble shaking original impressions, which is why my Charlotte Simmons looks like the blond actress in The Faculty.

Sometimes the writer purposefully leaves the main character’s appearance ambiguous. For the record, it drives me nuts. J.M. Coetzee often does this and I can’t take it. Race in South Africa changes everything, and I just have to know. I may have missed the entire point, but like everyone else, I read for myself and not the author.

This ends the second bibliographic musing, probably of many. Tomorrow I do final preparations for the annual QLA conference coming up this weekend. I hope I'll still get to read. We'll see.

Comments

[veronica]

I know just what you mean. A few years ago I decided to read the original stories of the movies of my childhood, to see how much I could create my own image of the characters. I found the cartoonish Cruella de Ville will never measure up, and Julie Andrews just can't be as snippy and unnerving as the real Mary poopins.

[Gawain]

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[Aria]

however - I don't agree that this always works... sometimes you have a favorite novel... one so favorite you're AFRAID to watch an adaptation of it for fear it won't be true to the novel... and then you finally watch all 5 hours of the A&E/BBC version of it... and because they DID do such a good job of sticking to the novel, your old idea of how Mr. Darcy looks and sounds is forever wiped away by the look and voice of one Mr. Colin Firth (whom I must admit - is probably BETTER than my original idea of Darcy - but still... it bothers me that his voice is so ingrained in my head as Darcy now - that bothers me worse than the picture of him as Darcy in my head)

Anyway - just goes to show that reading first and then watching doesn't always work out so well...

[Dad]

I’m with Aria. A number of years ago, before the film, I read Lord of the Rings. I pictured Gollum as the doppelganger of my grade eight math teacher. (I don’t recall being her Precioussss.) Then came the movie and…guess what? Instead of imagining Gollum as my math teacher, in the memories I have of my math teacher, she looks like the movie version of Gollum.

Seriously, though, when I try to recall the mental images I had conjured up of hobbits and hairy halflings, of ringwraiths and orcs when I read the book, I can only see the movie versions. My memory has been stolen, my once fertile imagination supplanted by film cels. There is no chance of getting them back.