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I just finished a delightful romp through Henry James' The Golden Bowl -- Yes, you heard me, delightful ... I've been reading all of James' oeuvre in chronological order to prepare me for the 'big three' final novels, but after watching Merchant & Ivory's film version, scripted by the incomparable Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, I had to jump to the end and dive into it. I was amazed to realize that she literally reduced pages of prose to individual lines of dialogue for the shooting script, as well as retaining pieces of dialogue from the novel. Taking Rebecca West's advice to hear the novel as if being spoken, rather than slogging through the hierarchical punctuation structures, brought the novel alive ... and prevented me from becoming bogged down on pages containing lengthy sentences. Hearing Nick Nolte's, Anjelica Houston's, Uma Thurman's, and Jeremy Northam's voices in my head as I read provided a very rich experience.
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