Theme Park at its Darkest

2.

It’s the only book I’ve ever finished and then picked up to read again. This certainly does not mean it is an ‘easy’ read. For a modern reader, it’s actually pretty difficult, and I believe this is a direct result of Emily Bronte’s first-rate skills as a novelist. She is a beautiful writer, and her grasp of the English language is unsurpassed.

She also knows how to build a character, which has less to do with gathering idiosyncrasies and has more to do with countenancing the mysteries about her characters who, when they act, do something absolutely bat-shit crazy that dawns upon you as wildly unlikely, but entirely plausible in the immediate aftermath.

The other thing about it, which is in opposition to its status as a school book and established status as a classic, is that it is so damned weird. These are very weird people, made even weirder by the isolation of the oppressive place in which they live.

Their passions are the flip-side of their insanity. This propels them and their behaviour, and is deeply compelling to us as readers. We all want to be transfigured by a great passion and to live life as intensely as possible.

The novel travels all the way out to extremes, and every step of the way is illumined by Bronte’s insight, and rendered by her exceptional linguistic gift.

Martin Scorsese said that it is extremely difficult to adapt a novel as a film, and the greater the novel the greater the difficulty, because a work of art is native to the medium in which it is rendered.

I trust his insight, given the greatness of both Taxi Driver and Raging Bull: it is difficult to imagine either of these works as novels. You have to experience them as films because of the way they use draw you into the reality of their present as an experience that is heard and seen, and if you experience these films in a cinema, as something felt.

For this reason, I will never watch the film of All the Pretty Horses, because of my relationship to it as a novel. And despite the fact that Wuthering Heights continues to endure in culture and is constantly remade as a film, not unlike Frankenstein, its greatness is in its realisation as a narrative that transports you from beginning to middle to end, rendered through the written word.          

This entry was posted on April 3, 2026 at 6:51 am and is filed under Observation, Reading with tags All the Pretty Horses, Emily Bronte, gothic, gothic novel, Martin Scorsese, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, Wuthering Heights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.