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This question arises from an essay on Brokeback Mountain written by Annie Proulx, at her official site http://www.annieproulx.com
I responded to it as follows.
I do think that this is a challenging question for any literature message board.
In about Brokeback Mountain
Annie Proulx writes:
It is breath-taking to read the story and then see how faithful the movie version is.
I was impressed with how close Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh is to the PBS production. Of course Waugh is British, and Ms. Proulx is speaking of American authors.
But, I also think that The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula LeGuinn is very close to the PBS movie production in the early 1980s. The only thing in LeGuinn's novel which was left out of the film, to my knowledge, was a one line comment about the evil Dr. Haber, that he would occasionaly use young men to satisfy his sexual desires. In the movie, the only sexuality was the love between George Orr and Heather LeLash.
I was disappointed at the omissions in the movie version of Steinbeck's East of Eden, especially with regard to the Chinese Cook, who is described by Rabbi Harold Kushner as the "moral ballast" of the novel. The cook, a devout Christian, spends four years studying Hebrew, all for the sake of understanding Gods words to Cain "Sin crouches in the doorway and TIMSHOL..." which is variously rendered by different translations as "you SHALL rule over it" or "you MUST rule over it", but the cook ultimate concludes that the proper translation is "you MAY rule over it" (i.e. you have within you all that is needful to conquer temptation, if only you exercise your freewill, which was Pelagius' position, refuted for the West by Augustine.)
I responded to it as follows.
I do think that this is a challenging question for any literature message board.
In about Brokeback Mountain
Annie Proulx writes:
It is breath-taking to read the story and then see how faithful the movie version is.
I was impressed with how close Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh is to the PBS production. Of course Waugh is British, and Ms. Proulx is speaking of American authors.
But, I also think that The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula LeGuinn is very close to the PBS movie production in the early 1980s. The only thing in LeGuinn's novel which was left out of the film, to my knowledge, was a one line comment about the evil Dr. Haber, that he would occasionaly use young men to satisfy his sexual desires. In the movie, the only sexuality was the love between George Orr and Heather LeLash.
I was disappointed at the omissions in the movie version of Steinbeck's East of Eden, especially with regard to the Chinese Cook, who is described by Rabbi Harold Kushner as the "moral ballast" of the novel. The cook, a devout Christian, spends four years studying Hebrew, all for the sake of understanding Gods words to Cain "Sin crouches in the doorway and TIMSHOL..." which is variously rendered by different translations as "you SHALL rule over it" or "you MUST rule over it", but the cook ultimate concludes that the proper translation is "you MAY rule over it" (i.e. you have within you all that is needful to conquer temptation, if only you exercise your freewill, which was Pelagius' position, refuted for the West by Augustine.)
