No Pigs This Week

There will be no Mohammedan/pig comments this week except to ask the question, "When a Mohammedan goes to a MacDonald's' and asks for a hamburger is he committing some sort of a sin?" And if he shops at a Piggly Wiggly does that mean that he might as well commit suicide and consign his soul to the Islamic version of hell?

Let's talk cinematic versions of novels. Back in 1979 a movie came out called The Warriors. The movie was directed by Walter Hill (who seems to have gone downhill since The Long Riders) and was based on a novel by Sol Yurick. I saw the film when it first came out and I enjoyed it. I've seen it several times since then and have always enjoyed it. It had a mythic quality. The novel was based on the history recounted by Xenophon entitled Anabasis. Xenophon was a participant of the march from Persia by the 10,000 and while he tends to punch his own importance in the matter more than is gentlemanly, we can pretty much rely on his memoirs of the March Out.

This week I bought a DVD of the film and a copy of the novel on which the film was based. I did njot buy the Director's Cut of the movie. I bought the version as originally released. I've found, over the years, that Director's Cuts are exercises in masturbation by the director. In other words, the director's cut is akin to saying that, "This was my original vision and 'the suits' made me change the movie." And I've often found that the director's cut just stinks. I'm not interested in Walter Hill's "original vision." I'm interested in the version I saw some 26 years ago. If I was interested in the original, or true version, I'd read Anabasis, which I have. and which I enjoyed.

I got hold of the novel The Warriors in the mail today. I've not read the book yet, but I read the introduction by Sol Yurick And to tell the truth, reading the introduction made me not want to read the novel. He bitched about the publication of the novel and the movie version of his book. Yurick seems to think of The Warriors as an "art" or "socially conscience" novel and that Hill just raped his work. On the other hand, such great novelists such as Hemingway, Faulkner or Chandler never pitched a bitch about the movie versions of their novels. They just took the money and assumed that anyone really interested in the story told in the movie version would take the time to read the book. If nothing else, it shows the confidence of the writers. Hemingway and company knew that their stuff was good despite the screen version. Yurick seems to think that his reputation rests on Walter Hill.

But to get back to the point. Yurick's introduction to The Warriors was one of the few introductions to novels that made me not want to read the novel. I've read introductions to Proust's novels and Joyce's novels, and each made me want to read the novel. I never finished the novels in question, but I learned something from the introductions. Yurick's introduction, on the other hand, taught me nothing except that Yurick considers himself a "serious" novelist who can sling around words about Camus, post-modernism, social realism and on and on. In other words, he seems to be a guy who doesn't want to tell a story as much as he wants to make a social statement. He's a one remembered novel wonder, which more than most of us will ever be. And he bitches about it because he's not going to be remembered for his novel Fertig.

If a person wants to make a socialist statement perhaps that person should study Jack London. London managed to insert Socialism in his novels without shoving it in the reader's face. Hemingway, Faulkner, John Gardener and John Updike were/are able to let their works stand alone without extensive apologia or self/social analysis. They told/tell a story and let the reader take it as they would. When a novelist has to interpret his work for the reader he's failed. Or he's a post-modernist, which is pretty much as being a failure.

But what the hell do I know? I'm just an uneducated bum.