Are Some Books Unadaptable?

Rammel Broadcasting's original video:

[peterg]

Finnegans Wake, I had trouble adapting that one to my own brain.

[scottjones]

I absolutely love everything you said about Rings of Power, and the tragic future of fantasy, sci fi and comic adaptations because of the wrong conclusions Hollywood will reach after the failure of recent attempts.

[diamonddavewonfor]

"Gravity's Rainbow" was the first thing that came to my mind.

[Wilsonn_esquire]

There’s never been a good adaptation of Wuthering Heights! You’d need actors (etc) who could convey the power and madness of a King Lear, the hysteria of an Ophelia, the claustrophobic brooding of an Ahab, the incestuous horror of an Oedipus, against a backdrop of vicious, prolonged abuse, and a landscape of pure, bleak poetry, carried through multiple, intimate generations growing from childhood into adulthood, and all expressed in a single (breathless) breath by an ensemble cast equal both to one another and the task. It’s exactly the kind of magic that only exists on the page!

[AlbertAlbertB.]

I'd imagine an live-action adaptation of the Metamorphosis to be similar to the Russian film Stalker or Lynch's Eraserhead, and I think it could very well be done. It needn't be a body horror, it has to be a psychological horror. I think it can even be done without the physical metamorphosis.

[juliemartin]

I came across this site and this post. I was very impressed - didn't agree with everything he felt couldn't be done, but really enjoyed his reasoning. I'm glad you found the site and gave us your own list

[MaximusStetich]

Epic poetry has been very magical for me, but so much of it rests off of heightened beauty and fevered sentiment, It would be hard to get an adaptation that could match these things with sincerity. I’d love to see The Iliad, The Shahnameh, or Orlando Furioso - but Hollywood would be tempted to either metaphysically mock the grandeur of the story, or pretentiously posture about it.

[Tolstoy]

Salinger hated “My Foolish Heart”, the 1949 adaptation of his story “Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut”. He refused to allow any further adaptation of his work. CITR will be under copyright till 2046.

[Boonton]

My goto answer here would be Joyce's Finnegans Wake.
1. Almost no one has read it or can read it?
2. If you have, how are you going to get everyone else to read it for a production.
3. How do you adapt puns and wordplay in multiple languages into a visual medium?


On the other hand Ulysses could probably be done as a decent limited series. A problem is most people do not know Homer well enough that they will recall the story chapter by chapter. What to do would be to have two stories, one would be Homer's Odyssey for half of each episode and then Dublin. It would essentially be two adaptations fused together and for the elevator pitch you could note that since both works are public domain you don't have to pay anything for the rights.

If done well I think it would have an effect like the adaptation of Cloud Atlas but since it would only be toggling between two time periods it would be easier to focus.

[thebigshep]

It's funny he mentioned Book of the New Sun, because when I read it I thought it was uniquely suited for adaptation, so much so I thought that if it was done well I'd probably enjoy an adaptation better.

Personally, I think it's perfectly suited for an animated adaptation of creatively colossal proportions, with multiple animation styles.

[Moonpome]

Although the world may finally be ready for an adaptation of The Left Hand of Darkness, the likelihood of it being done badly makes me hope that it doesn’t happen. It could be glorious if it were done well.
Another difficult one would be 2666, it might work as a longer format tv production, but it’s impact wouldn’t be the same.

[lisagarrity]

Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow. With improvements in CGI, they could create Runa and Jana'ata but the number of changes to the story that Hollywood would need to make to the script to be put on the screen in today's culture would make the story unrecognizable.

[jamesholder]

I think my take on this would be to see if I can make an adaptation work, not that a work is unadaptable.

[mattygroves]

Good point about New Sun. I've always assumed it was unadaptable, but it's interesting to speculate about a gradual process of revelation in a visual medium. The constraints could be creatively productive. I think Wolfe's story "The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories" could make a truly great adaptation.
I sometimes imagine an adaptation of the Silmarillion as an anthology series with different styles to suit the range of mythic registers of its various parts. Parts like the Ainulindalë mostly narration over animated visuals, others like Lay of Lúthien more traditionally cinematic, but with the elevated reality of a stage play.

[rishwiz]

Joyce, Hermann Broch, most of Pynchon, Italo Calvino and Borges.

[crabtrapsnow]

The Overlords of War. My sense is that space opera and the the alien creatures in the book could not be turned into a show or movie and keep the same tone as the book. It could be made funny or campy, but it seems to me it is very difficult to do a sort of dry space opera without being too serious, too dry, and awful. And I can't imagine a media company executive even wanting to try. What came to mind for me when you discussed sacrilege to even attempt an adaptation is not book-related, it is a recent movie: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. No matter how much respect the creators have for the subject, my respect for the subject makes me shudder when I think of someone dressing up like him, trying to act like him, no doubt adopting his deliberate child-friendly speech patterns, etc. I can't believe I'm saying something so melodramatic, but seeing Tom Hanks dressed up like Mr. Rogers on the poster for that movie is repulsive to me. Even though I have nothing against Hanks. It has been recommended to me, but I don't think I will ever watch it.

[thursdaythursday]

What usually makes books unadaptable is when they consist mainly of a people’s thoughts inside their head or else people standing around discussing ideas. A lot of Henry James novels would be examples of the former, maybe God Emeror of Dune for the latter. Books with lots of plot and dialogue tend to be easiest to adapt.

[ScottDanielson]

My example of a story that I thought was unadapatable was "Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang. Was proven wrong when it was made as "Arrival". Since then I think about this question differently.

[jackwalter]

I think it would be impossible today to capture the ambiance of 1950s New York of Catcher in the Rye. Perhaps Steven Spielberg as director.

[joshuacreboreads]

I just looked up whether there are any adaptations of The Magic Mountain… Apparently, there is one that is 5 hours long. I’m going to have to dedicate one of my evenings to it sometime soon.