This book is something special, primarily for Gorey fans (this is admittedly true of everything he wrote). The book opens with a rare interview with Edward Gorey that is full of enchanting and informative tidbits; Gorey himself is charming and fun, as you would expect.
The screenplay of "The Black Doll" is mysterious, macabre, and full of references to films both familiar and obscure. It has the satisfying inscrutability of a Robbe-Grillet novel—but with much more charm and friendliness. I suspect that this screenplay would not make a terribly watchable film--much of the action and information about the characters appears in explanatory texts within the screenplay, but not in dialogue or explicit action--but that is sublimely unimportant. All in all, The Black Doll
is a book to go back to, and puzzle over and delight in again and again over a glass of port (or three).Speaking of the unfilmability of things: this is as good a place as any to call you attention to the utterly amazing Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story
, a delicious and hilarious film of (and ode to) Sterne's 'unfilmable' Tristram Shandy
. I've never been able to finish the book, so I can't in good conscience write anything about the film's relationship to the book, or vice versa--but the film is endlessly surprising in its sophistication and delicious literary whatnottery. Check it out!
No comments:
Post a Comment