Words Show Us More than Images

Stephen Hunter wrote another great piece yesterday, on why movies are made from books, whether to read the book first, and whether it matters if they change the story in the movie. The entire thing is a must read. But here are a few gems, and I'm going to add in a quote from Kurt Vonnegut at the end, to pile on.

I sat down to read Hunter's piece before taking a much-needed nap on a Sunday afternoon. Reading the piece was more refreshing than any nap, because of the way Hunter evokes a love and appreciation for words, in a world gone crazy with images.

Do I have to read the book first? Hmmm. A tough one. My answer has mainly to do with the quality of the book in question. They seem to come in two flavors: literature and not. How can you tell them apart? Well, actually, nobody can, except for the New York Review of Books and maybe they're just guessing. However, the best way to make this decision is to look at the first sentence of the book.

"Call me Ishmael." Yes, you should read the book (not that anyone's going to make another version of "Moby-Dick"). Can you not instantly feel a shiver in the prose and understand that the writer has a command of the language that isn't a part of the book, it is the book. Melville: genius. The book isn't just a story expressed in symbolic blots of pattern known as words, it is somehow, gloriously, a fusion of words and story so that they are inseparable. It's a living thing. It's not about plot. It's about feeling, knowing, understanding the accursed vanities of yon twisted Ahab upon the foredeck, stumping and growling and radiant with blasphemy, and watching how the fanaticism of his scarred ego infects those about him until they believe unto death by whale violence.

...On the other hand: "The VC-208 flight was somewhat lacking in amenities -- the food consisted of sandwiches and an undistinguished wine -- but the seats were comfortable and the ride smooth enough that everyone slept until the wheels and flaps came down at RAF Northholt, a military airfield just west of London." No, folks, you don't have to read the rest of Mr. Clancy's very fine "Rainbow Six" to conclude that for that distinguished gentleman, language is a medium by which facts are transported from his imagination to yours. Words are merely vehicles; they haven't meaning, weight, rhythm, sound, feel of their own or anything that resembles life.

You just don't read this type of writing, this love for language, very much anymore. And why is that significant? Hunter answers that question as well.

Storytelling movie-style is different than storytelling prose-style. The primary issue in prose is motive: You have to understand why the people do what they do, or else the whole shebang falls apart as illusion. The minds of the characters have to be consistent to be believable; action has to flow from character. Fiction writing is about what happens internally, even if lots of guns come out and stuff blows up.

Movies don't have time for all that internal crap. They can't go inside, so what's the point? They can show only from a distance, and if people do things -- silly things, random things, violent things -- we still accept it because, well, we're seeing it. It's there, it's reality, we go with it. Then there are pressing commercial obligations: They have seven minutes to catch the attention of a 17-year-old boy whose brain has been fried by video games and who, when he's not lost in cyberspace, primarily wants to get high or laid, in no particular order. He is the key to their riches; he must be pandered to.

Did you catch that? Action has to flow from character. I immediately thought of Bill Clinton. So many people in America said that his actions with Monica Lewinsky were separate from his actions as President. But I knew, his actions in both spheres sprang from the same character. And his actions with Monica revealed his character to be deeply flawed. He and his own interests were at the center of his universe, not others. His reliance on poll data also showed that. So a literate person would hopefully ask him or herself, is that a good thing if he makes decisions as president based on self-interest more than care for others and a desire to serve?

Read the entire Hunter piece.

Lastly, Kurt Vonnegut, in his new collection of essays called "A Man Without a Country," talks about the imagination. He points out the positive effect of words on the imagination, and the negative effect of images, especially endless images.

We are not born with imagination. It has to be developed by teachers, by parents. There was a time when imagination was very important because it was the major source of entertainment.

In 1892 if you were a seven-year-old, you'd read a story -- just a very simple one -- about a girl whose dog had died. Doesn't that make you want to cry?

Don't you know how that little girl feels? And you'd read another story about a rich man slipping on a banana peel. Doesn't that make you want to laugh? And this imagination circuit is being built in your head. If you go to an art gallery, here's just a square with daubs of paint on it that haven't moved in hundreds of years. No sound comes out of it.

The imagination circuit is taught to respond to the most minimal of cues. A book is an arrangement of twenty-six phonetic symbols, ten numerals, and about eight punctuation marks, and people can cast their eyes over these and envision the eruption of Mount Vesuvius or the Battle of Waterloo.

But it's no longer necessary for teachers and parents to build these circuits. Now there are professionally produced shows with great actors, very convincing sets, sound, music. Now there's the information highway. We don't need the circuits any more than we need to know how to ride horses. Those of us who had imagination circuits built can look in someone's face and see stories there; to everyone else, a face will just be a face.