Last evening I saw John Updike and Bruce Wagner – the latter is arguably my favorite L.A. novelist – in dialogue at the Writers Guild Theater in Beverly Hills. The event was the release of Updike’s latest novel “Terrorist”, which is receiving mixed reviews but as far as I am concerned even the half-baked work of a master modernist such as Updike is far preferable over the next offering from Dan Brown or Lillian Jackson Braun.
The theater was filled to capacity and the audience was comprised almost exclusively of forty and fifty-somethings. Updike clearly does not resonate with the young’uns these days and I think the kind, affable, and self-effacing author was well aware of this fact as he lamented the death of the written word, looking back at his own youth that was always filled with literature.
“There were always books in one’s home back then,” he said, “and magazines – with words, not just pictures like today.”
To add insult to injury, one of the attendees asked Updike if he thought that “today’s literature is coming from the writing on TV, like the shows on HBO.”
Honest to God. There’s some schmuck running loose out there who thinks screenwriting is modern literature.
Only in L.A.
I hope.
My first impulse, of course, was to stalk across the packed theater and beat the man senseless with my walking stick.
But I left my walking stick in the car.
I’ll never make that mistake again. There’s always someone in need of a beating when a weapon is unavailable.
I don’t see that the person necessarily agreed that literature comes from HBO or screenwriting, but rather was asking Updike whether he believed our society as a whole is pouring literary energy into television, or whether modern American society looks to television as its “literature” in the same way previous generations looked to written works.
Or should I just get in line for the beating?
Nice try, Adriana, but get in the fucking line.
Television as literature is an awful concept in theory and practice. You don’t read TV — it’s a passive activity that requires nothing from the participant.
LOL! Of course it’s a horrible idea, it’s preposterous. But I can tell you that many current textbooks look to television or film as a teaching tool. In my business law class, legal concepts are being presented through movie clips. Classrooms today will supplement a book with a movie. Now, you and I know, supplementing isn’t the same as substituting, but I suspect on some level, students will equate the “book” with the movie. “I didn’t read Harry Potter but I saw the movie.”
All right, argument over. I’m in line.
p.s. because I have my pride, I need to clarify. I, personally, do not use movie clips to teach legal concepts in my business law class, the company that puplishes the textbook offers movie clips as a tool.
When I was in high school in the mid-70s I attended a class called Mixed Media, which was essentially a course that showed short films made from great literature (like “Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge”) and then they would screen the film for the students as an exercise in compare and contrast.
You’re still getting a beating though, Adriana. I’m just in that kind of mood today.
I think I mentioned somewhere once before that in college I took an English class called “Film as Literature.” But the films we watched were classics like “High Noon” and stuff by Hitchcock and Kirosawa, things that made statements.
Whatever, it was an easy bullshit class. But at least I can read!
Rodger, next time just throw something at the dumbass. Like your right fist.
I think the fact that it came up as a question at all is indicative of the cultural shift away from literature and toward movies.
Not that that didn’t already exist. I think that the problem has become compounded with a new(ish) generation of screenwriters who grew up with film more than they grew up with books. More and more screenwriting today feels self-referential. Rather than looking toward literature for source material, other films are being referenced.
I think you can look to the childhoods of these writers and see that they’re the first generation that grew up with blockbuster movies instead of blockbuster books.
If he were getting a start today, for example, Capote wouldn’t even sell through his advance, but the next hot indie filmmaker gets more blowjobs at Sundance than you can shake a stick at.
Depressingly on the money, Stephen. Thanks.
One other note: do you realize how difficult it is for most writers to sell through their advances these days, Stephen?
Screenwriting seems so bad… so many movies have so many forehead-slappers…
As a matter of fact, I do. The publishing business is just getting more cutthroat wih decreasing margins every day.
Which is why I’m keeping the day job.
You’re a smarter man than I am, Stephen Blackmoore.
Rodger — you can write the book that becomes the movie! That way it will be a movie of substance literarily……..
xxoo!
–now to read that short story of yourn.
[...] HBO As Modern Lit Tagged with: Books, Charles Bukowski, Cormac McCarthy, Hunter S. Thompson, Ian McEwan, Jack [...]
[...] pleasure to see the old master at a live event produced by the Writers Guild, which I wrote about briefly for 8763 Wonderland: Last evening I saw John Updike and Bruce Wagner – the latter is arguably my favorite L.A. [...]