stephen king liked munson's book and that worked for me

I stood before my shelf of paperbacks wondering which one to read next and finally decided to try Ronald Munson's Fan Mail only because its dark cover had nothing else but the title and the author's name in red and a glowing blurb from Stephen King (A fantastically crafty nail-biter in the Ira Levin tradition. I loved it!) instead of a tantalising drawing or sketch.

And I found it hard to find good places in the narrative to put the book down while life and sleep took over.

This doesn't mean that I had discovered a rich trove of literary achievement. It just means that it was the proverbial page-turner for me. For good reasons (more about that below).

This also doesn't mean that an endorsement from Stephen King is a guarantee of any kind that you will like the book (although in this case, it did for me).

The story of a beautiful TV anchorwoman who is the object of the obsessive creepy attentions of a secret admirer on the deranged side of the fence called "The Watcher." It is told entirely using emails, faxes, messages left on answering machines and transcripts of recorded conversations. I've had mixed results with such a device (worked for me with The Anderson Tapes and didn't with Death of a Politician). This alone can make this book seem unfilmable (something that has happened with an Ira Levin work before). Although Sidney Lumet managed to do well with The Anderson Tapes, a similar exercise with Munson's book would require a significant departure in material and setting. A heaping bowl of To Die For and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind along with generous doses of John Waters might work, but it still feels too stale. Perhaps some David Lynch and David Fincher for good measure. Oh! And perhaps Oliver Stone in his Natural Born Killers mood.

But I digress.

Not entirely.

Just like in Condon's book, you find yourself laughing at and with some of the characters in the book. Unlike Condon's book, though, the turning of pages ends appropriately. There's almost no fat in the book.

And of course, no flights of expository fancy. What a relief.

Back to the bookshelf now to find the next rabbit. Thank you so much, Mr. King.

what's the point of owning a mace, if you don't use it? [june 25, 2005]

I've read Ira Levin's play that forms the foundation of Deathtrap, as well as the stage play with the record run. I even remember this Marathi play called Sadist that has similar plot elements (except it lasted only for about 30 to 45 minutes from 8pm onwards on some weekday on Doordarshan). So, I didn't the benefit of relishing the suspense and the twists that Levin seems to be a master of. Great performances from the cast made the viewing useful. And it's nice to spot all the allusions Levin makes to the works that have been inspirational for his work on thrillers (including Schaffer's Sleuth [references noted before]). Shaffer was also behind The Wicker Man. There are also two complete phone numbers mentioned in the film (516-324-3049 and 516-324-5457) [see also: Sneakers].

At one point in the film Caine gets a line that goes "You two thought that i was going to take that mace and do a Vincent Price?". I wonder if that's a reference to another play that inspired Levin, Patrick Hamilton's Angel Street, which had Vincent Price on the cast roster (the play was the source for the classic film Gaslight).

book tag

[with a strong sense of déjà vu]

I have to thank Gaurav for this re-direct. I also owe him some murderous looks and grimaces for cheating on the outbound list and restricting my options greatly.

Total Number of Books I Own: Despite my frugality in the matter of purchasing books in the US of A, my bookshelf and allied boxes contain something shy of 150 books. The bulk comprises books on film: technique, theory, and machinery (duh!). If I chose to include my collection back home in Pune, I'd clock something in the lower 400s.

Last book I bought: I haven't bought any books since I got back from my trip to Pune/India, so I'll clock up the book at the top of the stack from Pathfinder: Collected Plays by Mahesh Dattani.

Five Books That Mean a Lot to Me: This is like invoking a random number generator that produces truly random numbers (or, if you want a trite analogy, it's like a box of chocolates). My answers are likely to fluctuate between an empty list and a list that overlaps in part or whole with this list: Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk, ( the nihilistic cynicism reflects perfectly; and the goal of Project Mayhem resonates strongly with me), The Adventures of Dennis by Victor Dragunsky (this was something I received in High School as a prize for General Proficiency; I've read it so many times since then that it hurts to count; I wish I could be more articulate on why this one's important), The Great Indian Novel (got me hooked on Shashi Tharoor's writing, and I've found a lot of delight from watching one fragment of rich articulate thought follow another), The Sherlock Holmes canon by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (the binding that exists right now is home-grown; I wore the original out through repeated reading), A Kiss Before Dying (not only does Ira Levin's writing reveal a mastery of the form of the entertaining novel, but also this novel contains the only instance I know of a twist that is simply unfilmable).

Tag five people and have them do this on their blogs: Gaurav took more, I'll take 5. Sudarshan (here's another yummy opportunity), Samrat (the salacious[sic] angle of the BCQC),Hirak,Aditya (in return for all the interesting reading recommendations I've received),Godya.

roast mules

When I picked up Ira Levin's Son of Rosemary, I was prepared for what it offered: the inevitable apocalyptic showdown between good and evil (last seen in the final sequel in the Omen canon) along with descriptions of the ease with which the devil's son (in this case) had become part of society. What I wasn't prepared for was the way Levin worked his way through this sequel, starting off 27 years after the events of the original novel, with Rosemary waking up from her coma. The book was a fast easy read, very typical of Levin's style. I should have expected the neat twist at the end (after all this is the guy who wrote A Kiss Before Dying), which put a different spin on everything that had happened till then. Recommended as a light alternative to heavy prosaic (prozac?) "literary" tomes. As for the title of this post: Go read the book.

easter weekend

It's Easter Sunday. The weather sucks though: cloudy, bleak and clammy. It's been this way since Good Friday. The irony has overstayed its welcome, though (need I add at this point, that I was reading Son of Rosemary on the train today?). Thankfully, I chose to attend mass, which has given me positive boost. I've been a faithful couch potato for the last couple of days now. I picked up two Ira Levin books at the public library on my way home on Friday: Son of Rosemary and Deathtrap (a two act murder mystery set, as was A Kiss Before Dying, in Connecticut). I finished the play on the train home. The play was extremely successful on Broadway (it set a record as the longest running mystery/thriller on Broadway) and also became a film starring Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve. I loved the play -- it reminded me a lot of Sleuth (whose movie adaptation also featured Michael Caine). The first act reminded me of a Marathi play I had seen on Doordarshan a long time ago called Sadist. That said, the rest of Friday was devoted to Star Trek: TNG, now showcased as "TNG Uncut" on TNN (which means they take out the little bar at the bottom and give you the episode full-screen).

Saturday was movie splurge day. I started off with Michael Caine (yes, yes, I caine-t get enough) doing in his early days as the smart scientist who saves the day in The Swarm. A tad overlong, the film is also interesting for the cast roster that's an exercise in name dropping: Katherine Ross (remember her in The Graduate?), Richard Widmark, Olivia de Havilland, Slim Pickens, Fred MacMurray, Henry Fonda ... time to go gulp! Then after a break for the daily duties, I settled back into the warm cavity I had created for myself in the couch for Mimic, a movie I've been meaning to see for a long time, ever since I caught del Toro's Cronos. The plot is a classic B-horror tale: a mutant strain of roaches threatens New York City. Del Toro's harrowing vision of the underbelly of the NY subway system (a favourite of horror writers. Ref: The Midnight Meat Train, from Clive Barker's Books of Blood, a collection I highly recommend) gets fantastic support from the SFX crew (Rob Bottin pops up yet again). The twist (and hence the title) is that this strain of giant roaches has evolved to mimic its predator, man. Corny as it may sound, the twist is understated, and the film worked for me for its textures, colours, and moments. There are lapses in logic, but I would forgive all that in exchange for a hour and more of solid scares. I took an extended break (well, to be honest, the tube betrayed me with low-quality programming) and returned after dinner to catch good old Clint Eastwood in High Plains Drifter. This was Eastwood's first western as a director, and there's a little tribute to Sergio Leone and Don Siegel, if you look carefully. The elements are all familiar: a small frontier town, a mysterious stranger, a conflict of morals, the inevitable showdown and the subdued tension. If you've seen the movie and still didn't get it, Clint makes it easier for you (check out the audio clip).

Ira Levin double bill

It's probably a good time to note that I finished reading A Kiss Before Dying and Sliver, both by Ira Levin and marking good endpoints of his work. Both books are fast reads, but each gave me something to write about, so here goes.

A Kiss Before Dying may be familiar to triviamongers as the source for two films one made in 1956 and the other in 1991 with Matt Dillon and Sean Young. The latter adaptation with significant changes to the source novel served to inspire the Abbas-Mustan fronted gore-fest Baazigar, which established Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan's "evil hero" phase and also relaunched Anu Malik's career as a music director. The book is well-paced and has a great little twist (which may surprise even those familiar with the basic plot of Baazigar) that is unfilmable.

Sliver explores obsession and voyeurism with a technological twist and presents us with the unsettling and dangerous consequences of such compulsive behaviour. While not a literary masterpiece, the novel betrays an interesting writing style. Sentences are short and staccato. Conversations are made of such sentences with a few exceptions. It seems to be written like a little diary of notes that someone would maintain. Not too much detail, but just enough hooks to trigger the rest of a memory. Everything seems to be a play with the title itself (which refers to the high-rise buildings erected on narrow bases that resemble splinters). There's a nice little dinner conversation where Kay Norris is talking to a guest while refilling everyone's wine glasses. If you aren't paying too much attention, her words are likely to confuse you as they reflect her shifting attentions. Pity, the wrong people adapted this to film (the ultimate barbaric act being an altered ending that was as lifeless as the rest of the film).

Rated V for violins: Quadrigenarious French déja vu

We started watching Truffaut's classic The 400 Blows yesterday. The music (violins of course) that opens this 1959 film about childhood was strikingly 'Bollywoodian'. This triggered off a memory of It's a Man's World by James Brown, which opens with a flourish that seems almost sampled from a Hindi film. Guess we are not alone. Incidentally, The 400 Blows was the first French film to be shot in widescreen (2.35:1).

And yes, watching the rerun of The Wrath of Khan was quite entertaining (the "Khan!" moment must go down as Shatner's campiest).

Library hauls

This preceded the activity above. I picked up another handful of books at the Atlanta Fulton Public Library:

* Sliver/Ira Levin

* A Kiss Before Dying/Ira Levin

* Raga Mala: The autobiography of Ravi Shankar

* Prize Stories 2001: The O. Henry Awards