by Julia H. Jackson
Last fall, Death Cab for Cutie musician Ben Gibbard and Son of Volt’s Jay Farrar released an album entitled “One Fast Move or I’m Gone: Music From Jack Kerouac’s Big Sur.” The duo wrote 12 songs inspired by Kerouac’s 1962 novel after creating the soundtrack for an accompanying documentary. The two musicians gave new life to Kerouac’s celebrated stream-of-consciousness storytelling by creating a new sound from his Beat rhythm. The album and film have gotten good press, in part because Gibbard and Farrar are skilled composers, and also because they are continuing the tradition of recreating stories in song. Perhaps, when a story is shared in one medium, and then reinvented in another a generation later, perhaps that is when the story becomes legend. Just what do we mean? Take a look at Artists for Literacy, a nonprofit that promotes literacy through artistic learning tools, and also happens to host an entire catalog of songs inspired from books. Today we bring you 5 Songs Inspired by Literature, and you’d be surprised by how many you’d recognize.
Book: Ghost World, by Daniel Clowes, which later became the 2001 film of the same name
Daniel Clowes’ 2000 graphic novel follows the story of Enid and Rebecca, inseparable high school graduates who don’t know how to approach impending adulthood. Instead, they first mock and then befriend an older man, who slowly pushes them further apart. Aimee Mann’s album Bachelor No.2 came out the same year, and her song of the same name captures the listlessness of shared adolescence: “So, I’m bailing this town, or– / tearing it down, or — / probably more / like hanging around.”
Book: Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley’s 1818 breakthrough novel Frankenstein is a cult classic; its blend of gothic and romantic tones, combined with its epistolary format and chilling humanity, give it a weight that few books have. It has been reincarnated many times, in many ways, but perhaps none quite so unique as Bob Dylan’s 1967 recording of “All Along the Watchtower.” The song, which like many of Dylan’s most famous, is usually attributed to parables from the Bible, but according to the Artists for Literacy project, there is a link between the song and the famous monster novel. Think about it: a cold 
winter evening, and two lost souls consider a dark horizon: “There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke. / But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate, / So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.” And, just as the evening is coming to a close, “two riders were approaching, and the wind began to howl.” Creepy…
Book: The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
Bruce Springsteen earned the name “Boss” for a reason; not only is he heralded as the epitome of an American rock star, but his literary influences are just as American. Steinbeck’s 1939 novel follows the Joads, a family of sharecroppers from Oklahoma who go searching for a new life in California. Springsteen’s style is fitting for this archetypal American dream story; his interpretation of the working class struggle is almost as powerful as the journey of Joads: “Got a one-way ticket to the promised land /You got a hole in your belly and gun in your hand.”
The Ghost of Tom Joad, by Bruce Springsteen
2) “1984,” David Bowie
1984, George Orwell
Few things speak to the dystopian world of George Orwell’s Oceania in 1984 than the unnerving style of a young David Bowie. The 1949 novel is ruled by the totalitarian regime of The Party, which uses mind control and public surveillance to slowly destroy human civil liberties. What better way to recognize the book’s horror, and perhaps dark truth, than with Bowie’s macabre lyrics: “They’ll split your pretty cranium, and fill it full of air / And tell that you’re eighty, but brother, you won’t care.”
Hamlet, Shakespeare
Fiona Apple has taken one of Shakespeare’s most famous monologues from one of his most famous plays, and given it a throaty twentieth century twist. Hamlet, the Danish prince, asks the question “To sleep–perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub, / For in that sleep of death what dreams may come / When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, / Must give us pause.” And while Apple is not contemplating murder, she does conjure up the emotion and power of a timeless moment: “I got my feet on the ground and I don’t go to sleep to dream. / You got your head in the clouds and you’re not at all what you seem. / This mind, this body, and this voice cannot be stifled by your deviant ways. / So don’t forget what I told you, don’t come around, I got my own hell to raise.”
Sleep to Dream, Fiona Apple
The relationship between music and books goes back a long way, perhaps even to the days before printing presses and publishing houses, when the act of storytelling was a vocal enterprise. Once you start to dissect popular music, you’ll see how many popular songs, and even albums, are based on great novels or devoted to well-known writers. Remember Green Day’s cult hit, “Basket Case?” Doesn’t that sound a bit like J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye? How about The Roots’ “Act Won: Things Fall Apart,” which is clearly a reference to Chinua Achebe’s most famous work? And for you rock fans—the Iron Maiden repertoire is replete with literary references: “The Lord of the Flies,” “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” “Brave New World,” “Seventh Son of a Seventh Son.”
What do you think about this link between books and music? What’s missing from our list? Let us know what you think!
By Julia H. Jackson
A 16-year-old African American girl stands atop a staircase, looking down as her mother hurls insults and frying pans up at her. A South African rugby team seeks to unite whites and blacks with one anticlimactic game. A middle-aged man makes his life out of the skies, reinventing himself every time his plane lands. The ghost of a murdered girl peers down on the world below, wondering how to protect her family. And perhaps most fantastically, a family of foxes and their woodland friends fight back against a tyrannical trio of farmers.
Where do these stories come from? And why do they seem so familiar?
This year’s Academy Award season features a whole cache of films based on popular novels. These adaptations take risks by modifying subtleties in plot or character, and, sometimes, adding entirely new meaning. These changes reflect the transition from one media to another, which means that the director, screenwriter, and producer make creative decisions. The implied risk when adapting a book to a movie is that the director might anger fans of the original by changing the story or character to make it more appropriate for cinema. Just what is that line between adaptation and revision? We’ve compiled a list of 5 Films Adapted From Books that you can see during the winter holidays. Judge for yourself how closely each film mirrors the original book, and let us know what you think.
5. Precious
Inspired by the novel Push: A Novel by Sapphire (1996)
Claireece Precious Jones is a 16-year-old African-American girl growing up in Harlem during the 1980s whose journey begins from the darkest of places. Impregnated by her father for the second time, Precious endures the verbal and emotional abuse of her mother while struggling through school, all the while harboring a secret: she is illiterate. Her story begins to turn around when she discovers the Each One / Teach One alternative school, where she meets a classroom full of young women who, like her, are creating resources for themselves where there were none. The 1996 novel was adapted by screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher and directed and produced by Lee Daniels, who discovered Gabourey Sidibe, the New York native whose performance as Precious has already earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.
4. Invictus
Inspired by the book Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation by John Carlin (2008)
Nelson Mandela was released from 27 years in South African prison in 1990. His work to end apartheid earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, and in 1995, he decided to link South African unity to its most popular sport: rugby. Carlin’s book examined Mandela’s efforts to bring blacks and whites together in the critical 1995 Rugby World Cup against the New Zealand All Blacks. The film, directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon, weaves the traditional sports story with the themes of racial integration and social movement.
3. Up in the Air
based on a book of the same title by Walter Kirn (2001)
Walter Kirn met a passenger on an airplane who reportedly traveled 300 days out of the year, and spent more time with flight crews on planes than he did with his own family. This later inspired the character Ryan Bingham, a 35-year-old man whose job it is to fire people for large companies. Bingham (played by Oscar winner George Clooney) lives a seemingly relationship-free life, until he falls for a fellow traveler, and his employer’s efficiency expert (played by Anna Kendrick) starts questioning him about his lifestyle. The film is directed and produced by Jason Reitman, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Sheldon Turner. Given the current economic climate and the film’s central theme, Reitman and his crew decided to cast non-actors who had recently lost their jobs for 22 of the extra roles.
2. The Lovely Bones
adapted from the novel of the same name by Alice Sebold (2002)
Susie Salmon is this story’s chilling heroine, a teenage girl who is murdered by her next-door neighbor. She finds herself in a Heaven-like limbo where she peers into the lives of her grieving family and the killer as he prepares to kill again. Director Peter Jackson is best known for his blockbuster book-to-film hits, such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong. The cast includes Saoirse Ronan as Susie Salmon, Rachel Weisz as her mother Abigail, Mark Wahlberg as her father Jack, and Stanley Tucci as George Harvey, the killer. Jackson is known for his visual effects, and so it will be i
nteresting to see how he interprets Sebold’s vision of “heaven.”
1. The Fantastic Mr. Fox
Adapted from the story of the same name by Roald Dahl (1970)
Roald Dahl was famous for creating magical worlds for children to lose themselves in, many of which were transformed into movies (Charlie Chocolate and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, to name a few). In this most recent Dahl adaptation, director Wes Anderson (The Royal Tenenbaums, The Darjeeling Limited) employed a team to recreate the family foxhole using stop-motion animation. Jason Schwartzman, George Clooney, Meryl Streep, and Bill Murray were among the actors to embody the voices of foxes, badgers, rats, and, yes, people. Anderson reportedly added a first and third act the original story.
This list reflects a tiny percentage of the amount of books-to-movies in Hollywood. Think Harry Potter, Twilight, The Chronicles of Narnia…and that’s just fiction. The argument could be made that there are only so many stories to tell, but many ways to tell them. What do you think? Does a book lose something when it becomes a movie? And what about the conversation that happens between an author and a screenwriter? How might that affect which direction a film goes?
Let us know what your favorite film adaptations are before the awards season starts!
“Ghost World,” by Aimee Mann
