![\"books3.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/books31.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I<\/span>‘m going to make a vow right now to never again say in print or in conversation the words: “The book is better.”<\/p>\n Not because the book isn’t better, not because I don’t think the book is better in many cases, and not because I don’t think it’s ever valuable to compare a film adaptation with its literary original. But because the statement “The book is better” is too easy a gut reaction, too simplistic a critical statement, and too cliched a response. It doubles as an elitist phrase, both revealing that you’ve read the book in question and that you, being literary, prefer it to its pop-art cousin the cinema. Now, of course not everyone who uses the phrase intends those elitist connotations and I don’t mean to suggest that they do.<\/p>\n Instead, when dealing with a film adaptation of a book, I will seek to compare how they differ, what specific things the book did better, and what specific things the film did better. Sometimes I can’t be that specific, because the difference is more ephemeral than that, but I will be specific about that, too, as specific as I can.<\/p>\n I already try to do this, recognizing that the film, though based on an existing work, is also its own work of art and ought to be treated as such rather than merely a copy\/shadow of the original. But I will make it explicit. Hold me to this. If any time after today, you hear me say the words “The book is better” or see me write them, call me on it. Remind me to think more carefully about the relationship between the two works, and tell me to rewrite or expand what I wrote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I‘m going to make a vow right now to never again say in print or in conversation the words: “The book is better.” Not because the book isn’t better, not because I don’t think the book is better in many cases, and not because I don’t think it’s ever valuable to compare a film adaptation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11113,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,2],"tags":[29,3302],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/booksfeat.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":141,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2006\/11\/adaptation-rexamining-fidelity-criticism\/","url_meta":{"origin":11111,"position":0},"title":"Adaptation – Rexamining Fidelity Criticism","author":"Jandy","date":"November 18, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Most film criticism dealing with adaptations of books focuses on how closely the film sticks to the book. In other words, an adaptation is often judged based on whether or not the film accurately recreates its source. And of course, many films do try to be faithful to their sources,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books and Reading"","block_context":{"text":"Books and Reading","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":134,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2006\/11\/toward-a-nontheory-of-nonadaptation\/","url_meta":{"origin":11111,"position":1},"title":"Toward a (non)theory of (non)adaptation","author":"Jandy","date":"November 4, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"I wrote out a bunch of this last night, but then lost it just before I posted. Grr Arrgh. So this is a recreation, and I'm not sure I got it all. Anyway, these are questions that are bouncing around in my head as I work on a paper about\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books and Reading"","block_context":{"text":"Books and Reading","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":27302,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2011\/10\/50dmc-35-favorite-adaptation\/","url_meta":{"origin":11111,"position":2},"title":"50DMC #35: Favorite Adaptation","author":"Jandy","date":"October 12, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"The 50 Day Movie Challenge asks one question every day, to be answered by a few paragraphs and a clip, if possible. Click here for the full list of questions. Today's prompt: What's your favorite book-to-screen adaptation? Like the \"favorite remake\" question, this one has a number of ways to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/50DMC-West-Side-Story.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":149,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2006\/11\/modernism-and-the-nouvelle-vague\/","url_meta":{"origin":11111,"position":3},"title":"Modernism and the Nouvelle Vague…","author":"Jandy","date":"November 25, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"To ponder... The French New Wave is to cinema what the Modernist Novel is to fiction. \"In the novel, writers like Virginia Woolf and James Joyce tried to evoke 'inner speech' or 'stream of consciousness,' through associative and fragmented forms, omitting verbs, pronouns, connectives, and articles, and leaving sentences uncompleted.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books and Reading"","block_context":{"text":"Books and Reading","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":866,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2007\/12\/action-movie-eye-candy-the-matrix\/","url_meta":{"origin":11111,"position":4},"title":"Action Movie Eye-Candy: The Matrix","author":"Jandy","date":"December 24, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Mark suggested that I atone for my previous elitist post by posting an eye-candy action movie sequence. I've been trying to think of an unusual one to match the parkour scene from District B-13 I posted a while back, but what with being on vacation, home, and my computer deciding\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":200,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2007\/01\/the-ruin-old-english-film\/","url_meta":{"origin":11111,"position":5},"title":"“The Ruin” (Old English) film","author":"Jandy","date":"January 30, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I came across this short film in a blog by an Anglo-Saxon scholar, the Unlocked Wordhoard. It's a 6-minute adaptation of an Old English elegiac poem, \"The Ruin,\" done by some students at the University of Oxford. I hadn't read the poem before (Old English and modern English text here),\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books and Reading"","block_context":{"text":"Books and Reading","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11111"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}