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Oct. 19th, 2001 04:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kuangningMy birthday present to myself this year, I've decided, will be two books. One of them, Look Homeward, Angel, I owned at one point, and then I moved. The other is The Prince of Tides, which I've never owned. If you haven't read that book, and even if you have.. do not watch the movie. The movie sucked bowling balls through a garden hose. I'm remembering being very excited over being able to see the movie... and then sitting down to it, and almost crying.
Everything that made the book special was left out of the movie. The interaction between Lila and her husband, the realness of Lila herself as seen through Tom's eyes, the strength of Luke.. all of it, they left out. Even beautiful, broken, strong but fragile Savannah gets turned into just another crazy. All the magic was gone. Instead, they replaced it with a love story that was such a minor thread in the book that one could miss it.
I wrote two college papers on the subject of The Prince of Tides. On the subject of toxic parents, and on the roles the children adopt within such a household... and about the patterns relationships fall into, and how changing the pattern brings some predictable responses from the other members of the family. It was important to me because the pattern of my own family life was very similar to what Pat Conroy depicted so well. My family, too, had its capable child, the one who could be relied upon when the world fell apart, its sensitive child, who seemed to take on all the family's dysfunction and act them out so that the rest of us could rally around and fix things, and its Luke, the shining star who could do no wrong.
If there was a single book which helped me understand and process what my family's dynamics were, and see my own parents as separate people... that would be the book. I spent three months reading and rereading, referencing, and researching each of the patterns and symptoms of dysfunction it presented. Avoidance / attraction, sudden violence, the honeymoon period in between outbursts.. but, beyond all that, it was a book of stories. of stories within stories, the way people's lives really do twine around each other. And when I sat down to the movie, that was what I expected to see. Tom's firm kindness towards Bernard, his adoration of his sister, his love for his mother, despite it all. To be presented with the pure pap that was his relationship with Lowenstein, then, was an acute disappointment.
I'm looking forward to rediscovering what I learned about the book almost ten years ago. And to learning more, because that's the test of the best books... whether you always find something you missed before, when you reread them.
Everything that made the book special was left out of the movie. The interaction between Lila and her husband, the realness of Lila herself as seen through Tom's eyes, the strength of Luke.. all of it, they left out. Even beautiful, broken, strong but fragile Savannah gets turned into just another crazy. All the magic was gone. Instead, they replaced it with a love story that was such a minor thread in the book that one could miss it.
I wrote two college papers on the subject of The Prince of Tides. On the subject of toxic parents, and on the roles the children adopt within such a household... and about the patterns relationships fall into, and how changing the pattern brings some predictable responses from the other members of the family. It was important to me because the pattern of my own family life was very similar to what Pat Conroy depicted so well. My family, too, had its capable child, the one who could be relied upon when the world fell apart, its sensitive child, who seemed to take on all the family's dysfunction and act them out so that the rest of us could rally around and fix things, and its Luke, the shining star who could do no wrong.
If there was a single book which helped me understand and process what my family's dynamics were, and see my own parents as separate people... that would be the book. I spent three months reading and rereading, referencing, and researching each of the patterns and symptoms of dysfunction it presented. Avoidance / attraction, sudden violence, the honeymoon period in between outbursts.. but, beyond all that, it was a book of stories. of stories within stories, the way people's lives really do twine around each other. And when I sat down to the movie, that was what I expected to see. Tom's firm kindness towards Bernard, his adoration of his sister, his love for his mother, despite it all. To be presented with the pure pap that was his relationship with Lowenstein, then, was an acute disappointment.
I'm looking forward to rediscovering what I learned about the book almost ten years ago. And to learning more, because that's the test of the best books... whether you always find something you missed before, when you reread them.
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no subject
Date: 2001-10-19 05:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2001-10-19 05:55 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2001-10-19 06:19 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2001-10-19 09:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2001-10-20 06:42 am (UTC)Incidentally, Jack Kerouac's first book, The Town and the City is consciously styled after Look Homeward, Angel. I recommend it.
Re:
Date: 2001-10-20 06:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2001-10-27 11:42 am (UTC)Condition: Good - 1965 SOFT COVER-Of Time And The River:Young Faustus & Telemachus
seller:
glenmcknz
Seller's Price: $15.00
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Hope that helps.
Re:
Date: 2001-10-27 12:26 pm (UTC)