Word: novels
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Watching The Black Stallion is like spending two hours with a stack of National Geographies. Director Carroll Ballard's adaptation of Walter Farley's boy-and-horse novel consists of one stunning view after another: coral seas, scarlet sunsets, moonlit landscapes, stormy skies. Almost every shot is suitable for framing, and Ballard prefers it that way. Whenever actors step into the frame, the director dismisses them quickly; he seems to feel that characters are intruders who come around only to mess up his pretty pictures...
...This is the first book I've written that I've felt under no time pressure to finish," he said at a reception after the reading. "I frequently start 200 pages into the novel, then work backward from the ending. I always begin with an epilogue and then struggle with the middle which usually comes slowly...
Irving said he will not be involved in the production of the movie version of "Garp" now underway. He has excluded certain parts of the novel from use in the film, particularly the short stories attributed to Garp...
Cannibals and Missionaries, By Mary McCarthy. (Harcourt, Brace, $10.95): If Iran is still on the map by the time Christmas rolls around, the basis for this novel's plot is depressingly relevant. A committee of liberals sets off for Iran to uncover the sins of the Shah's regime. On the way they get hijacked and what follows is what critics recognize as McCarthy's most politically aware creation...
Letters, By John Barth. (Putnam, $16.95): John Barth's endless epistolary novel takes five of the author's old characters and one new one and sets them to writing letters, usually not to each other but to dead people, themselves, imaginary characters, or the author. The letters go on forever through 700 pages, and though Barth's details follow an intricately laid-out pattern, there seems to be very little point to it all. Barth's writing remains contortedly witty, and alone gives Letters some value, but Barth might have shown some regard or consideration for his readers and restrained...