If you haven’t read these novels, I strongly recommend you to do so; they’re all amazing works of literature and are better in pages than they would be on screen. Hello and be welcome to my new book post.
"They would cast someone like Robert Redford and most of us do not have relatives who look like Robert Redford." – Gabriel García Márquez
Some of these great novels have been stuck in development hell for years, even decades –that’s where On the Road should have stayed-, while others have faced the opposition of their own authors and estate who won’t allow them to be made into future films.
The truth of the matter is that not everything that gets published is movie material and the way some novels are written, their language and ideas, would not translate well on the big screen.
Here you will find a funny cool classic work of American literature that took 11 years to be published; a novel that is a staple in Latin American literature; a touching and heartbreaking story set in the India of the 1960s; a savage story of the wild west with a very pessimistic view of mankind; and finally, a cool novel about a neurotic runaway rich teenager that hasn’t stopped causing controversy since it came out in the 1950s.
As I always do with my book posts, first you will have a description of the story and then a second part where I mention my thoughts, information about the author and some facts about the work.
So, without further ado, let’s begin:
5 - One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)
By Gabriel García Márquez
A picture of the late García Màrquez next to a cover of his most famous work. (Via: google.com)
“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aurelio Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon that his father took him to discover ice.” – One Hundred Years of Solitude
The novel that started the Latin American literary boom of the late 1960s and early 70s, a novel that has its share of “magic realism” (that is Latin American fantasy), the most famous work by its author and the only Latin American book title most people in the world know about. It tells the story of the Buendía family who found a town near a swamp, a city called Macondo. But the family is afraid of something that happened to them a long time ago, the birth of a child with a pig’s tail product of an incest.
Colorful, imaginative and surreal, the story will span into seven generations of the Buendía family, their successes, their failures and their inevitable interbreeding that will have terrible consequences. Revolutions, tyranny, fires squads, hurricanes, massacres, flying carpets, blood going down the streets, a woman who ascend to heaven on a cloud, progress and technology, a gypsy who will reveal himself to be the narrator of this story. Each passing generation will leave the family worse than before, and then, when the only ones who remain alive in the family are a man and a woman, the inevitable will occur.
Author Gabriel Garcia Marquez sits with a copy of his book ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ open on his head, Colombia, 1975. (Via: literariness.org)
This book launch its author to international stardom and made him a wealthy man; none of his previous books had sold more than 1,000 copies. Born in Colombia in 1928, Gabriel García Márquez studied Law at the University of Bogotá and worked as a journalist in Colombia, Europe and the United States. In the 1960s he lived in Mexico where he wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude, published in 1967 and translated to English in 1970. In 1982 he became the fourth Latin American writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. He went to write other successful novels. He was very criticized for his leftist positions and his friendship with communist dictator Fidel Castro, who lavished him with gifts. In the later part of his life he started suffering dementia. He died in Mexico in 2014.
One Hundred Years of Solitude has been labeled as a book that is basically unreadable and a book that is kept alive mostly because it is taught in colleges and high schools around the world, particularly in Latin America. I read it for the first time in 2003 and, although I have read several pages again, I don’t have the desire to read it again. It’s a very difficult read and many people are not ready for something like this. It is one of those books that everybody admires and wishes to have read, but no one has actually read it. In fact, I think I have only met three people in my life who have read it entirely. If you want to read an excellent book by García Márquez that is not as difficult and complicated as One Hundred Years of Solitude, I recommend you his 1989 novel The General in His Labyrinth about Dictator Simón Bolívar, it is one of the best historical novels I have ever read.
But again with One Hundred Years of Solitude. What it’s worth mentioning about is its creative and imaginative language that really makes you care about the fictional town of Macondo and its characters, the Buendía family. You will meet a woman dressed in black who spends all of her days sewing the same piece of clothing; a man whose body is covered in horrible tattoos; the gypsy Melquíades (the author’s alter ego), who brings to town the first ice making machine; a horrible massacre in a banana field (inspired in real life events); and a baby with a pig’s tail, the product of an incest committed by the last woman and man of the family. A story that starts as a Garden of Eden and ends in a total Apocalypse.
One part that have always stuck in my mind was when one of the sons the Buendía family, that is another one named Arcadio, is murdered and a fine thin line of blood comes out from his corpse and goes out of the door, goes to the streets and finally reaches the mother of the victim.
By the way, when you read it, try to count all Aurelianos and Arcadios that appear in this novel.
As book that has always been sought after to turn it into a movie. García Márquez was courted by many people in Hollywood about this, but the man always refused. He once said: "They would cast someone like Robert Redford and most of us do not have relatives who look like Robert Redford”. After his death his family has respected his wishes. Maybe in like 50 years when the author's copyright protection expire many will get their hands in this amazing imaginative work. But let’s just hope that day never comes.
4 - The God of Small Things (1997)
By Arundhati Roy
A depiction of the twins Rahel and Estha. (Via: google.com)
"If you're happy in a dream does that count?" - The God of Small Things
Rahel and her twin brother Estha enjoy a rather peaceful childhood in the India of the 1960s. One day, during an innocent family outing to go and see The Sound of Music, a despicable fat man does something terrible to Estha and this will leave him traumatized for the rest of his life. He keeps quiet about it; only Rahel, due to the special connection she has with her brother knows his secret. Life goes on until one day a cousin from Britain, a girl the same age as the twins, comes to visit. And a tragedy will occur and this will lead to the horrible murder of an innocent man. The family concludes that bad things happen when the twins are together, so they are separated from each other. After 23 years apart, Rahel will return to India to look for her brother.
Arundhati Roy and a cover of The God of Small Things. (Via google.com)
One of the best books of the 1990s and one of the most captivating books I have read in my entire life. It’s brilliantly written melancholy, something like a love letter to life, love, family and India.
This work deals with themes about Indian culture like child abuse, imagination, nightmares, prostitution, poverty, religion, a rigid caste system, corruption and even incest. You will learn about dirt-poor little kids begging in the streets, cows in the streets, big and strange birds, hallucinating dreams, Hollywood movies, droughts, contaminated rivers, suffocating heat, crowded train stations, little kids pissing in front of people at the airport, deafening noises, a nefarious aunt and even demons .
Thanks to its unique and magical language, The God of Small Things has been compared to Salman Rushdie’s Midnight Children and One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. It has also been compared to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockinbird. It won the prestigious Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 1997 and it was Arundhati Roy’s only novel until 2017.
She has said she will never sell the rights for a film adaptation of The God of Small Things. About this she once said: “Every reader has a vision of the novel in his or her head and I do not want it to be fashioned into one film. A lot of Hollywood producers approached me, but I do not want to sell the adaptation rights for any amount of money. I do not want the novel to be colonized by one imagination.”
A book that will touch your soul and break your heart; its characters, story and flavors will stay in your memory forever.
(For a better understanding of this amazing novel, check the review I wrote about it in 2021 right here: @thereadingman/the-god-of-small-things)
3 - A Confederacy of Dunces (1980)
By John Kennedy Toole
A depiction of Ignatius J. Reilly. (Via: google.com)
"I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip.” ― A Confederacy of Dunces
At thirty one years old, Ignatius J. Reilly still lives with his eccentric mother Irene at her house in New Orleans. He doesn’t have a job, and spends his days writing dissertations against the 20th century. When he goes out he criticize how people are dressed and gets in troubles, only to have his mother to rescue him. Always dressed in an overcoat and a ridiculous green hat, he also likes to go to the movies but just to mock aloud at the movies and the actors. He talks a lot about his “valve”, pointing at his stomach, and berates at his mother for every little thing. He has no friends and his only contact with the outside world is a former classmate, a woman with liberal and leftist points of view.
Strange and funny adventures come one after the other, and then, suddenly, Ignatius finds himself in need for money. After his mother crashes her car, he is forced to look for a job to help paying for the damages. But he hasn’t worked in years, can’t seem to adapt to the real word and criticize everything and everyone he comes across with. One day he will find himself stealing a hot dog! Tired of the rambunctious behavior of her son, Irene Reilly will threaten Ignatius with have him committed. Now he knows he has to run away, but where?
An artistic depiction of the late John Kennedy Toole next to his creation. (Via: google.com)
A book I read for the first time in 2006 and I’m currently reading again. The fat pseudointellectual Ignatius J. Reilly has become one of those enduring characters in American literature like Jay Gatsby or Captain Ahab; he has also been compared to Cervantes’ Don Quixote and even A Confederacy of Dunces has been named as the American Don Quixote.
Set in New Orleans, Louisiana, where author John Kennedy Toole was born, this riotous and funny novel, apart from being one of the funniest novels ever written, also points at the hypocrisy, mediocrity and how absurd society has become in general. John Kennedy Toole was born in 1937 and was raised in a middle-class family. Although his mother taught him to appreciate culture and even encouraged his artistic pursuits, he always had a conflicting relationship with her.
After graduating from high school, Toole went to study English Literature, became a professor and later was drafted by the US Army. He already had written a novel he later dismissed, that one would later be published in 1989 with the title The Neon Bible. After being discharged from the Army he began working on A Confederacy of Dunces; he based the character of Ignatius in a college of him who liked to dress in a very eccentric way and was obsessed with medieval life and the philosophy of Boethius. Apparently John Kennedy Toole finished the manuscript in 1963, he then sent it to some publishing houses, but it was never published. Tired and depressed, he committed suicide in 1969 by inhaling carbon monoxide.
It took 11 years, the efforts of Toole’s mother and the intervention of writer Walker Percy to finally get the novel published in 1980. The next year it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, cementing its reputation as a cult classic. There have been numerous theater plays based on this novel and the character of Ignatius J. Reilly has become staple of the city of New Orleans, to the point of even appearing at the Mardi Gras celebrations. There has been many attempts to take this great novel to the screen, but, cross fingers, let’s just hope that never happens.
2 - Blood Meridian (1985)
By Cormac McCarthy
A cowboy rides on the sunset of the American West. (Via: google.com)
“War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.” – Blood Meridian
In the borders between Mexico and the United States of the mid-1800s, a down on his luck 14 years old orphan, known only as the Kid, will join a gang whose purpose is to eliminate a group of sadistic Indians who wreak havoc in the territory, kill innocent pioneers and even fuck corpses. Things will take a major turn when an albino, enormous and despicable bald man, the Judge Holden, also joins the gang. The Kid will become an accomplice of the most brutal and hideous acts perpetrated by the gang.
Years later, the Kid, now a man, will try to redeem himself for all the horrible things he committed in his past. But one more thing awaits for him, a random encounter with the diabolic Judge Holden.
Author Cormac McCarthy who died in 2023. (Via: google.com)
A novel so shocking and violent that it would be better to never reach our screens. Cormac McCarthy (1933-2023) spent ten years writing Blood Meridian; or, The Evening Redness in the West; when it finally was published it shook both critics and the public alike. The book sold fewer than 2,000 copies, and most of its first edition was remaindered. It took a decade to finally be recognized as a major work of literature and one of the best novels of the 20th century. It is Cormac McCarthy’s masterpiece.
The have been numerous attempts to bring this classic to the screen, but none have ever come to fruition. Ridley Scott had tried several times to get the rights of this novel unsuccessfully; in 2013, he decided to direct instead Cormac McCarthy’s script The Counselor, a nice but misunderstood movie starring Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt and Javier Bardem.
I wonder how they plan to make something so brutal, disgusting and violent to the big screen. In chapter four, when the Indians massacre an entire caravan of innocent pioneers is just something so nightmarish an insane to be put in film. And the Satan-like figure of Judge Holden could only be played by someone like Marlon Brando, and Brando has been dead since 2004.
Other works by McCarthy have been made into movies; in 2008 the film adaptation of his novel No Country for Old Men won 4 Oscars, including Best picture and Best Director.
Let’s just hope this great novel stays in paper and never reach our screens.
1 - The Catcher in the Rye (1951)
By J.D. Salinger
A depiction of troubled teenager Holden Caulfield. (Via: vox.com)
"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth." - The Catcher in the Rye
Holden Caulfield, a neurotic upper middle class teenager drops out of his expensive prep school and returns in secret to New York City. There, in the matter of a few days, he will have a series of adventures: a secret encounter with a prostitute and her pimp, a brief encounter with an old friend, a date with a pretty girl and a stupid conversation with a taxi driver about ducks, all which will leave him even more depressed that he already is. He criticizes everything and can’t seem to understand the way normal people behave in society, and the way the world works. Tired of all the so called hypocrisy that surrounds him, he will decide to run away once more. But a surprise is waiting for him.
The not yet reclusive Salinger, circa 1950s, and a copy of his only novel. (Via: google.com)
It’s amazing to think how a book without a movie adaptation has stayed so relevant in 72 years after it was first published in our image-driven culture. So far, since its publication, this great classic has sold a staggering 65 million copies; one million copies are sold every year. It was author J.D. Salinger first and only novel, it’s his most famous work and, certainly, a very controversial one. Jerome David Salinger was born in Manhattan, New York, on January 1, 1919. He came from a family of Jewish descent. He published his first short story in 1940; his subsequent works appeared in magazines like Collier’s, Esquire and The New Yorker. After the immense success of The Catcher in the Rye he became a reclusive, with very few public appearances and spending most of his time in seclusion in New Hampshire. He only published 4 works of literature in his lifetime; not a great deal was known about him. He passed away in 2010.
The Catcher in the Rye is a novel about a teenager who doesn’t want to grow up, questions the new place of the US after WWII, and how a man can reconcile his true self with the hypocritical society in which he has to live in. Since its publication it hasn’t stopped causing controversy; it is one of the most frequently banned books across the United States and it was Mark Chapman, the guy who shot and killed John Lennon in 1980, favorite book. It was also one of the many books found in John Hinckley Jr.’s hotel room after his assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan in 1981.
The novel has a language that can seem crude, sarcastic and profane; it is also considered the first novel to use the word “fuck.”
Many attempts have been made to make it into film, but J.D. Salinger himself refused after two of his works were badly adapted into films. John Cusack commented once that his one regret about turning 21 was that he had become too old to play Holden Caulfield. Nevertheless several movies have taken inspiration from The Catcher in the Rye and the novel has been mentioned or referenced in movies like Six Degrees of Separation, The Shining, Conspiracy Theory and Rebel in the Rye. In The 25th Hour the protagonist lashes into a rant after seeing the words "Fuck You" scribbled on a mirror; he then rub the words out (a la Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye).
A dense, cool, controversial and great novel that I hope never, ever, reach the big screen.
So, that is for today’s post, friends, five great novels I hope you read as soon as you can and let’s hope they will never made into movies. I know this was a long post, but tell me what do you think, are you agree with me that these novels should never reach our screens? Have you ever read them? Which one caught your attention the most? Leave your comments down below, I’ll be happy to read them. Follow my blog for more content like this.
Now, check the best books I read in 2022 right here:
@thereadingman/here-they-are-the-10-f77fe61040ec9
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Until next time
Take care
Orlando Caine.