Comments on: Adaptation

By: bpsk

bpsk — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 03:40:40 +0000

Sorry PS, Rushdie’s my favorite author, but sad to say, this article was an exercise in verbal diarrhea. What was he, paid by the word?

By: prestidigitator

prestidigitator — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 21:10:53 +0000

@The Mute Oracle “But you excel as a muse even better.” As if things between us weren’t disturbing enough. :-/

By: The Mute Oracle

The Mute Oracle — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:46:56 +0000

@Prestidigitator: It did sting me a bit when he wrote that. He has a valid point there though. Jackson is a better director than Tolkien is a writer. But Tolkien’s impact as a writer should not be measured in his prose. I haven’t had a better imaginative escapist trip like the one I’ve had while reading LOTR. That’s gotta account for something. Hell, it was Jackson’s worship for Tolkien’s work that brought the movie to fruition.

But I’d eat up anything that Rushdie pukes without giving it a second thought.

p.s. Thanks for the compliment. Your talents at writing far surpass mine. But you excel as a muse even better.

By: prestidigitator

prestidigitator — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 22:09:43 +0000

@The Mute Oracle Oh don’t worry, you’re pretty good at ‘puking hyperbole’ and making it seem like elegant prose.

Have you noticed how Rushide nonchalantly disses Tolkein’s writing? Maybe it’s because I never got around to reading the whole book (because it bored me to tears), but I have to agree with him on Peter Jackson’s films being superior to the book. A friend I know just spewed some venom after reading that.

By: The Mute Oracle

The Mute Oracle — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 17:25:54 +0000

“In an interview conducted at the Telluride film festival last autumn, Boyle, when asked why he had chosen a project so different from his usual material, answered that he had never been to India and knew nothing about it, so he thought this project was a great opportunity. Listening to him, I imagined an Indian film director making a movie about New York low-life and saying that he had done so because he knew nothing about New York and had indeed never been there. He would have been torn limb from limb by critical opinion. But for a first world director to say that about the third world is considered praiseworthy, an indication of his artistic daring. The double standards of post-colonial attitudes have not yet wholly faded away.”

This is the sort of paragraph that proves how eloquent Rushdie is. Do you see the farce here? He presents a hypothetical situation, and then draws inference from it without ever touching on any tangible happenstance. “i imagined” a situation and concluded that “double standards of post-colonial attitudes have not yet wholly faded away.” But he does it so elegantly. I love this guy and his intelligence.

It begs the question – when will I ever gain the skill of puking hyperbole, and convincing everyone that it’s elegant prose?

p.s. It’s the elegant cover-up of farces, along with erudite expositions that shows Rushdie’s brilliance here.