Ulysses

Considered to be the greatest novel ever written, Ulysses is ripe with obscure references, wit, and a style of lyrical writing that makes the book better said than read. There have been two Irish films, one in 1967 and other recent version in 2003, called Bloom. Both are utter failures, and the best they can do is have passages read over the basic action in a desperate attempt to maintain James Joyce’s stream-of-consciousness style of writing. It’s the cardinal sin of adaptation. A true adaptation of this novel would have to substitute the written associations and wordplay with a solely visual language, allowing the power of the image and editing to represent the novel’s essence. I should also give Joyce’s last novel ‘Finnegans Wake’ a nod for being the most unfilmable novel of all time, despite this.

Cat’s Cradle

Although most of Kurt Vonnegut’s novels are unfilmable (That didn’t stop Alan Rudolph from making the horrendously bad Breakfast of Champions), Cat’s Cradle is one of his best, and most manic. The book’s narrator is researching the man who helped invent the atom bomb, and ends up discovering a substance that could spell the end of humanity. Richard Kelly, writer and director of Donnie Darko, adapted the book for Leonardo Di Caprio’s company Appian Way, but the project seems to have been dropped. Probably because it’s bloody UNFILMABLE.

The Wind Up Bird Chronicle

Hugely popular Japanese writer Haruki Murakami has penned nothing but odd novels, but his best is his most peculiar. It follows Toru Okadu in his attempt to find his missing cat, and then missing wife. Instead he finds psychics, oddballs, a well that transports him to a hotel room, shared dreams, and a damn spot he just can’t get rid of. Every time the novel appears to be gaining narrative momentum, it turns and twists surreal corners. I’ve only read the English translation, but this unsolvable mystery is utterly engaging, and possibly the best book of the last 50 years.

The Third Policeman

Another Irish novel (what do you expect, when Freud said the Irish couldn’t be analysed?), this one was recently name checked by hit TV series Lost. It was a clever attempt to get people to furiously read it, for it has little to do with the confounding show. Although more conventionally written than Ulysses, it’s far more insane. Its narrator commences a journey to find a black box, supposedly containing money of the man he, and friend Divney, killed. The narrator (and his soul Joe, whom he often converses with) wanders into a police station, and thus enters a world of wordplay, bicycles becoming people (and vice-versa), a stick so pointy you only have to think of it to be hurt, and other bizarre trinkets and characters, leading to a damning twist. While hilarious, Flann O’Brien’s book contains little of the three-act structure, instead revelling in the asides, footnotes, and distractions, making it unappealing for Hollywood.

100 Years of Solitude

This astounding piece of fiction resists the camera because it lacks any central character. Rather, it charts a century of a fictional South American town and its several generations of families. Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel is passionate, amusing, slightly satirical, and often surreal. Characters will fly past windows waving hello, and no one bats an eyelid. One character disappears from the novel by suddenly floating up into the air. It’s no wonder that this is one of the few books in this article that no one has even attempted to film.

Remembrance of Things Past

Also known as ‘In Search of Lost Time’ (which makes it sound like a Jules Verne yarn), Marcel Proust’s contribution to the world of literature is so difficult to film as it’s so damn long. The novel is divided into seven books, each one long enough alone! Although I’ve only managed to read the first two books, the entire volume seems to be autobiographical, about a sickly young man who aspires to be a writer, despite the distraction of 19th Century society. Proust’s novels incorporate the idea of scents, sounds, and certain objects pushing associated memories to the fore. Probably more suited as a TV serial, there have been a few films, mostly adapting one of the books. The best is Time Regained, starring Catherine Deneuve and John Malkovich

Metamorphosis

Strangely enough, Kafka can be done, as seen in Orson Welles excellent The Trial. But Metamorphosis is even more difficult for its protagonist, Gregor Samsa, awakens to find himself a giant insect. The story concerns the reaction of his family, as they move from horror to endurance, to an unjust disgust that permeates all thoughts. There’s been plenty of attempts to adapt this symbolic tale, the best being animations. However, this highly insular tale has yet to have a definitive celluloid version.

The Confederacy of Dunces

This one has a rich history of failed attempts to adapt to screen. For decades producers have bidded for rights for this book (which its author sadly never saw published, committing suicide due to publishers’ lack of interest. His mother persisted until it became the classic it is today). Actors have been lined up to play grossly overweight pretentious protagonist Ignatious Reilly, including John Belushi, John Candy, and Chris Farley, all of which failed. Steven Soderbergh came close to filming a version, with Will Ferrell as Iggy, but it ultimately fell through due to production problems. Personally, I feel Soderbergh lacks humour in most of his films, and would fail to do the story justice.

Any Thomas Pynchon Novel

Camera-shy Thomas Pynchon (seen here in his cartoon form in The Simpsons) is known for writing novels that are partly brilliant, partly baffling. Usually incorporating seemingly unconnected story strands that only link in the most cosmic of ways, Pynchon’s complex way of writing often makes his novels impenetrable. His most accessible is ‘The Crying of Lot 49’, a sort of conspiracy novel that never gets solved, with a 3-act play thrown in the middle for fun.

Don Quixote

The original “modern novel” has had many TV and film adaptations, with versions reaching back to the early 1900’s. But once again there is no definitive version. The 1947 Spanish Don Quixote is considered to be the best, although I would love to see the 2000 TV adaptation where Jonathan Lithgow played the deluded knight of La Mancha. Orson Welles spent most of his life trying to make a version, but failed to complete it. The problem with adapting this novel lies in the fact that its best moments are often the extensive sub-plots, most of which are ripe for films in themselves.

The Atrocity Exhibition

It’s only a matter of time before JG Ballard becomes the new PK Dick, with his socially aware sci-fi novels being snapped up for development, such as ‘High Rise‘. However, ‘The Atrocity Exhibition’ remains his most experimental. Essentially plotless, it endeavours to portray the impression modern society and mass media has in our private lives, our psyche, and our sexuality, and acted as a precursor to his popular and depraved ‘Crash‘. Ballard even suggests that readers should not start at the beginning and finish at the end, rather select random passages. Yet, an attempt has been made to film it. In 2001 Jonathan Weiss completed a version of the book, which was apparently approved by the writer himself, but unsurprisingly failed to make a name for itself. Click here to see a less than impressed review, and here for a wonderfully tense interview with the director about his film, the relevance of Ballard, and the role of the critic in independent cinema.

Catcher in the Rye

This is partly here because while reclusive author JD Salinger (pictured top) lives and breathes, this seminal novel will never go near the silver screen. In fact, each new print of Catcher in the Rye contains a hidden device that causes TVs and DVD players to explode when placed too close. But even when Salinger’s reign over his work fades, I still deem this book very difficult to adapt. It’s charm is in the adolescent thoughts of main character Holden Caufield, who acts with delightful bitterness, while secretly spotting the “phonies” all around him. It’s an incredibly difficult task to capture this in cinema without resorting to the laziness of including a voice-over.

Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnameable

Irish playwright Samuel Beckett’s trilogy of novels rival Ulysses in their difficulty to film. Yet while there’s ways of representing Joyce’s rich text on screen, achieving the same for these novels is next to impossible. Even Beckett on Film, a series of adaptation of his plays, turned out to be a failure of sorts. Molloy does contain characters, Moran and Molloy, but soon it seems their identities and stories merge into one. Narrative begins to crumble away in Malone Dies, in which a man’s attempts to retain identity through telling stories constantly crack open, until we’re left with The Unnameable, a long monologue that only hints at the concept of character, until it eventually “can’t go on”. How on earth could anyone adapt a novel that fails to have a character?

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