A task

Still trudging through Revolutionary Road. What's taking so long isn't so much that it's a bad book, on the contrary. It's a very well-written book with very vivid characters and a very subtle, yet powerful conflict at the center of their lives.

The problem that's keeping me reading at a very slow pace, I think, is the fact that my imagination is not being worked at all. I mentioned before that I actually saw the movie before I read the book. This is something I try to avoid, seeing as how I had a bad experience with that when I read Interview with the Vampire after seeing the movie, and found that I was so blinded by images of Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise and Antonio Banderas that I missed a lot of major differences as obvious as hair color and age. It was ridiculous.

Ever since my experience with IWTV, I pretty much made it a point to try to read the book before I venture into the land of movies. Every once in a while I break that rule. One instance where I broke that rule was very interesting, because I saw the movie, loved it, then read the book and hated it... even though the author of it is one of my absolute favorites. By the way, skip The Painted Veil in bound form and believe that Walter Fane is, indeed, none other than Edward Norton and that Kitty Fane is none other than Naomi Watts.

So, with Revolutionary Road, the thing that is making it a task to read at a reasonable pace is the very thing that makes the movie adaptation so excellent and Oscar-worthy-- it's too damn close, near identical to what you see in the movie!

All I see Frank Wheeler being is Leonardo DiCaprio. All I see April Wheeler being is Kate Winslet. I can hear those actors' voices shouting at each other during dramatic scenes. I can see Leonardo DiCaprio's vulnerable face so clearly, it's like I'm running a movie reel in my head, and the same with Kate Winslet's mature, troubled face. It's like I'm reading the screenplay, and that bores me.

I feel like I'm being robbed of my ability to escape and use my imagination by casting anyone I feel like casting into each of those roles, even if they're not actors to begin with. I like this freedom that a book offers, as opposed to a movie.

Back to reading...