True Grit And A Theory Of Adaptation

I've had this on my mind for a while. I have been re-reading Linda Hutcheon's excellent textbook A Theory of Adaptation and what led me to pull it off the shelf was watching the 1969 film of True Grit, mostly remarkable since it won John Wayne his only Oscar, an honorary consolation aside. The 1969 film is good but not great. Wayne is fine but the role is not remotely on a par with his work in two brilliant movies, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and The Searchers. As Rooster Cogburn Wayne wears his eye-patch on the left. Glen Campbell as LaBoeuf is, sad to say, rather dreadful. As I say, a good film. 65/100.

2010 saw the estimbale Coen Brothers giving us their take on True Grit and it was watching this that made me want to read the source novel. The Coen offering is a far better film than the Wayne vehicle. Jeff Bridges is superb as Cogburn, wearing his eye-patch on the right. Having now read Charles Portis's novel (1968) I can safely say that the later film is not so much a remake of the earlier, rather it is a more faithful adaptation of the novel. Which brings me back to Hutcheon who nails the nature of artistic adaptation: 'An adaptation is a derivation that is not derivative -  a work that is second without being secondary. It is its own palimpsestic thing.' 

True Grit (2010)? 86/100. A worthy adaptation of what transpires to be a very fine novel. If the book comments on which eye Cogburn has covered, I have forgotten it. This is the best novel I have read in an age. Brevity can be the soul of wit and this is a brief novel, 206 pages. The Great Gatsby is not a long book and that fact does not stop it being spoken of as the Great American Novel. All of which speculation is silly but I will say this - True Grit is a great American Novel.

A Great Film, A New Calculus, And The Story Of Three Yorkshiremen

I am always careful not to bandy the word 'great' about too careleesly in my frequent opining on films. But you will have to indulge me in the context of His Girl Friday. Even my Halliwell agrees, describing it as quite possibly the funniest film ever made. I'm not quite sure I'd go that far although I can't, off the top of my head, suggest a better candidate. It is a lightning-paced verbal firecracker of a movie. Based on Ben Hecht and Charles Macarthur's stage play, the film takes the daring (and outrageously successful) risk of changing the sex of one of the leads into a woman - Hildy Johnson, played superbly by Rosalind Russell. Her co-star is Cary Grant, possibly more briliant that in any other role and, yes, I have seen Philadelphia Story. 94/100. 

Next, that new calculus. I refer to cricket and the much discussed 'Bazball', itself a nomenclature not loved by its principal practitioners, Messrs Stokes and Brendan McCullum. Mind you Stephen Greenblatt has never taken to 'New Historicism' even though any fule kno that he invented that critical method. Well, Bazball has been worrying me a tad. If we ignore (as we should) the test against Ireland, England, by their own generosity had thrown away two successive tests - the last against New Zealand in the winter and the first in the Ashes at Edgbaston. I like Zac Crawley as a batsman and I find supportable the view that he will become a worthy test batsman. However he gave a completely pudding-headed interview after the Edgbaston debacle in which he parroted the rot about the result not mattering and being in the entertainment business. I've been a sports fan all my life and I can tell you Zac that most of us regard the pursuit of victory as the foremost requisite of professional sport. Yes, you can take risks (including that of defeat) where they open up greater prospects of overall triumph, but throwing international matches away on the basis of a sense of theatre? No, that's professional wrestling and that is not sport.

Anyway, I can forgive the defeat at Lord's, just as I can forgive Carey's dismissal of the criminally negligent Bairstow. Such things tend to come back and bite you and Carey duly endured a tough time at Headingley. Mind you there was no redemption for Bairstow who kept wicket poorly and contributed bugger all with the bat. Which is not to say that Bairstow doesn't have plenty of credit in the bank after last season's heroics.

The Headingley test was almost too tense to watch but I managed it. Good to see one of the nice guys, Chris Woakes, a proper Brummie, scoring the winning runs. His boyhood cricket coach was my great mate ICW at Aston Manor CC. Fame by association!

Nice guys do win.

So those three Yorkshiremen. Bairstow is one and, England's victory notwithstanding, he had a poor match, as did, quite untypically, Joe Root. His droppped catch off Marsh in the first innings nearly cost England the match. Root owes us nothing. Which leaves the third Tyke. The old saw is that when Yorkshire cricket is strong, so is England's. In these days of a criminally diminished County Championship, this is harder to support but in the credit column we have to list Harry Brook. He batted with all the sureness of the infant Bambi in the first innings but then was lion-hearted in the second. Better to be lucky than good. Brook might just be both.  

Of Cycling And Thinking

I've been stuck in a bit of a mental rut these past two weeks. Not a bloody big hole but, yes, a bit of a rut. Shit happens.

But today I cycled for an hour and a quarter (not earth shattering but this is me we're talking about) including twice scaling the Col de Worcester Lane and as a result I feel rather more positive. It hasn't helped that I've got stuck on something (literary Darwinism if you must know) in my thesis but I think the floodgates of academic inspration are at the point of re-opening. Floodgates is probably a bit strong - trickle of erudition perhaps. Literary Darwinism shouldn't really be that big a concern - much of it, to this untutored eye, is rather pants.

My good and distant friend JB posted a nice link on Facebook yesterday, a quotation from his late political mentor, Senator Paul Wellstone:

If we don't fight hard enough for the things we stand for, at some point we have to recognize that we don't really stand for them.

Nice. I keep trying to think of new words I can deploy in excoriating Donald Trump but the one I come back to is - vulgar. I know, I know, I myself have never been afraid of a bit of vulgarity but, really, all the time? And on top of that you have to add the racism and the bare-faced lies. Clinton is hardly a stranger to artful half-truths but she simply isn't comparable to the Donald and his knowing cronies.

It's the cat I feel for

I must confess I am taken with the Trump puppet on Newzoids - the representation of his hair as a curled-up cat is inspired. 

Let us now raise the tone with something from the King James Bible which also put me in mind of Trump:

Whose hatred is covered by deceit, his wickedness shall be shewed before the whole congregation.   Proverbs 26:26

I hope so.