IN LOOKING at the relationship between literature and film today, we see where the encroaching electronic media of computerized screens, even on cell-phones, have compromised the previous separate individual and distinct identities of literature and film. Previously, the identity of literature was rooted in printed and bound pages in the form of books, and film was rooted in projections on large public screens, or small home-based TV screens. Now, the increasing transferral, creation, and reading of abridged texts on computer screen formats, even cell-phones, insidiously adjust us to the illusion that texts have become personal ‘films’ in a fused format of electronic ‘writing’. What this change does is increasingly usurp the individual creative freedom of creative writing and creative film-making (even when influenced by published literature), converting the two purely to a message system, promoting it to ‘tag-along’ consumers as one ‘up-to-date’ progressive process.

Of course, literate populations, especially in North America and Europe, are not overwhelmed by this development, since its emergence is the technical result of their own nation’s democratic freedom, which encourages scientific or technical inventions, which in turn provide new jobs, but do not infringe upon or erase the proliferation of publishing houses, bookstores, film production companies and cinemas independent of State control, yet faithfully supported by millions of citizens who are able to comprehend where methods, or processes of communication, are not linked to any infallible entropic linear progress based on the replacement or destruction of intellectual creative traditions, but merely add to an expanding training and job market.

Paperback revolution
No one can deny that it was the paperback revolution in publishing of the late 1950s and 1960s which, by making tens of thousands of soft-cover classic and contemporary writers and their works available through bookstores in cities, towns, and villages championed the excitement of literacy, learning, and self-reliant creativity in places like British Guiana and early independent Guyana.

The paperback revolution of the 50s and 60s also became an economic bonanza for North American and European publishers and writers, because it made both reading and the buying of books a popular, everyday activity, complementary to shopping for basic everyday necessities. This boost to literacy and education for the common man, added to the fundamental process of schooling, only occurred because the average citizen could walk into any of his nation’s bookstores and find cheap new paperback editions of hundreds of titles put out by paperback publishers like Penguin, Faber & Faber, Pan, Corgi, Fontana, Panther, Palatine, Jonathan Cape, Calder & Boyars, Dell, Mentor, Signet, Bantham Books, New Directions, Grove Press, etc.

Clearly, present book publishing is ripe for another surge of profitable cheap paperback publishing in both classic and contemporary titles, which can be exported between nations, aided by the various new free-trade agreements being brokered at present.

A large part of the excitement of literature during the paperback publishing surge involved bookstores being filled with paperbacks that were current films opening, or being rerun in local cinemas. A new excitement was added for both literature fans and film fans, because now they could both read the book and see the film adapted from it at the same time. They could note the differences, and enjoy or prefer either the book or the film.

Those local students who already had a formal primary, secondary, or college education, but were also avid readers during the paperback revolution, increased their writing and comprehension skills via the practical reading experience, much more than if they relied on formal school training alone. However, this beneficial magnetic attraction to literature and reading was vitally linked to the excitement and curiosity of visibly confronting and buying at hand, cheap, brand new paperback titles by high-quality writers that were in bookstores every day, all the time, and not restricted to temporary book launchings, book fairs, or impersonal on-line sales.

The promoting of literature by daily bookstore shopping was influenced by the public process of cinema-going, which created daily crowds. Also, the process of publishing, where a writer’s book is first issued in expensive durable hardcover editions guaranteeing both author and publisher a worthwhile return, then followed by a quantity of far cheaper paperback editions, was adopted by the film industry when the small format of videos and DVDs was introduced like an easily accessible paperback novel after a film’s debut in cinemas.

Literature-film relationship
Another relationship developed between literature and film when film producers and film directors sought jump-start or sustained inspiration from literary works, and when creative writers began to add to their influence the visual and mobile present-tense sensitivity of the cinematic camera. Many film producers and film directors used the popularity of novels, stories, or plays by certain writers to guarantee the success of the film. And it often worked because of the artistic merit of the cinematic professionals involved. This applies to films like ‘LOLITA’, based on Nabakov’s novel; ‘BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S’, based on Truman Capote’s novel; ‘THE SERVANT’, based on Robin Maughm’s novella; ‘SATURDADAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING’, based on Alan Sillitoe’s novel;  ‘A RAISIN IN THE SUN’, based on Lorraine Hansberry’s play; and many more outstanding films based on outstanding literature.

But another difference occurred when films kept the titles of literary works, but made almost completely different films that were in their own way as brilliant as the novels, or stories they were taken from. One of the greatest examples of such brilliant transformation is Michelangelo Antonioni’s film, ‘BLOW UP’, totally different and far more interesting and exciting than the short-story, ‘Blow Up’, by the masterful Argentine novelist, Julio Cortazar, by which it was nevertheless influenced  and acknowledged boldly in the film’s credits.

The James Bond films are another major example. Most of the acrobatics, gadgetry, suspense, thrills, and  clever comical dialogue in the Bond films are distinct cinematic introductions to entertain film viewers.

Films like the two versions of ‘CASINO ROYALE’ are far removed from Ian Fleming’s brilliant first novel; and when it comes to Fleming’s stunning short stories, like ‘A VIEW TO A KILL’, ‘FOR YOUR EYES ONLY’, ‘OCTOPUSSY’, ‘THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS’, and ‘QUANTUM OF SOLACE’, their film versions are very far removed indeed from their literary origin.

Readers and film viewers can therefore read Ian Fleming’s novels and stories and see the Bond films, yet experience two completely different works of art, equally brilliant in their own way. Ian Fleming, of course, was one of the best English prose stylists to emerge in the 20th Century, and his Bond novels and stories are superb examples of description, argument, logic, sophistication, knowledge, and sensitive human reactions; a short story like ‘Quantum Of Solace’ is one of the most outstanding examples of form and content one can find in modern literature to date.

Present-tense mode
The utilization of the present-tense mode of description involving either the central ‘I’ of a story, or
‘you’ or ‘we’ which helps each reader to participate in a story, closed the gap between literature and film. After the indelible examples of fluid, richly-visual creative novels by leading 20th Century creative writers like  Marcel Proust, James Joyce, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Claude Simon, Phillipe Sollers, Michel Butor, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Marguerite Duras, and others, the coast was clear to create great literature and great film-making simultaneously.

A ground-breaking novel like Arthur Miller’s ‘THE MISFITS’, written simultaneously as a film, yet not like a typical film-script or screenplay, remains a beautiful example of clear writing and film-making, which does not clutter or confuse the mind.

Similarly, the profoundly simple (yet complex) New Wave French film director, Eric Rohmer, wrote all his major films, first as stunningly beautiful and deeply perceptive short stories titled ‘SIX MORAL TALES’.

This sort of literature has had more influence and effect on the best American TV series about everyday living than on contemporary Hollywood films. TV episodes like ‘SEX AND THE CITY’, ‘RED SHOE DIARIES’, ‘BOSTON LEGAL’, ‘ALLY MCBEAL’, and even earlier TV episodes of ‘MIAMI VICE’ and ‘NASH BRIDGES’, allow various writers with their own creative style to write each new episode, and the producers, directors and editors of such TV films, like Michael Mann, Zalman King, David Kelley and others, offer less controlled, stereotypical action-obsessed screenplays than those that dominate today’s Hollywood films made from commercial formulas rather than high-quality creative literature.

The importance of utilizing the lessons of high-quality creative literature with a visual cinematic precision and realism also has pleasant moral implications, since it encourages people to look at films with often clear, beautiful, positive attitudes and lifestyles which inspire  them to say: “I want to be like that; I want to live like that,” whereas what makes excessively violent exaggerated dramas inferior, except when they explore and reveal moral dilemmas, is that they have little to inspire people to say: “ I want to be like that; I want to live like that.”