Top 10 Fictional Cinematic Books I Wish Were Real

Yes, writing is boring. Wow, can it be boring. The only thing possibly more boring than the act of writing (other than golf) is watching someone else do it. So why are authors so well represented on film?

I think it has to do with the supposed ease with which one writes a book. To make a movie, there needs to be actors, and lighting technicians, and key grips, and makeup artists, and so on. Writing a book, why, that's you and ink and paper! What could be easier? Anyone could do it! How many times have you heard the phrase "I could write a book" or some variation thereof? We admire authors because we feel that we could easily become one; there is a real sense that anyone could write a book given enough time and energy. And indeed, many, many books are written (or started, anyway) on that assumption, that it'll be easy. I didn't say it had to be a good book.

But watching a person write a book? Ooh, typing. Oh, look, he's consulting a thesaurus. Cue the dramatic musical interlude to accompany the author's personal quest to come up a suitable replacement for the word 'penultimate'! Thrill to the agony of endless rewrites. Weep over the devastating loss of valuable indefinite articles for the sake of clarity! Oh, the horror! The horror!

See, writing isn't easy. It took me over an hour to come up with this intro. Imagine if I had devoted a whole day to it, what an epic this'd be!

So, to return to the main thrust, there are plenty of movies about authors. But I recently came to wonder what, exactly, were these authors writing? What kind of books? You usually get a glimpse of the process, then a quick cutaway to the novel in a store window (like that ever happens). I'd like to actually read some of these novels, whether they be good (quite likely in some instances) or bad (very likely in some instances). There have been examples of late where, due to the popularity of the television series or movie, a fictional novel within the story is hastily written and released for the fun of some and the profit of others - The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer (from Twin Peaks), for example, alongside the more recent Bad Twin (from Lost) and Charm! (from All My Children).

So, I present a list of fictional cinematic books I'd like to actually read for one reason or another. Please be warned: there are significant spoilers ahead. I've tried to avoid novels that are represented more fully within their original source material, i.e. the original novel the movie or television series is based on. Misery, the Kathy Bates/James Caan shocker, was based on a novel of the same name by Stephen King; while you don't really get a sense of it on film, Misery's Return, the book Paul Sheldon writes under duress while hobbled and tortured, is almost completely written within King's novel. Likewise examples such as The World According to Garp (although an exception is listed below); while I would dearly love to read the novels that T.S. Garp writes (especially The World According to Bensenhaver, graphically rendered in the pages of John Irving's original novel), the movie does not go into near enough detail to make Garp's novels seem at all interesting. We have to take it on faith that Garp is a critically-acclaimed author, and no actual details as to what he writes about are provided. This is a flaw common to many author-centric movies, the complete and utter disregard for what the author actually writes. Again, as will be seen below, if the movie itself is interesting enough, it can overcome this dilemma.

1) Wonder Boys from Wonder Boys - You don't truly get to know what Grady's (Michael Douglas) follow-up novel to his surprise hit The Arsonist's Daughter is about. What you do know, however, piques the interest. Grady has not had trouble writing, he's had trouble stopping; his novel Wonder Boys is over 2,000 pages long, with no end in sight. His student Hannah gets her hands on the manuscript, and her quick commentary leads me to believe that Grady has written a vast epic in the style of Delillo or Foster Wallace:

I'm not saying the book isn't really great-I mean, really great- but at times it's, well, very detailed, you know, with the genealogies of everyone's horses and all the dental records and so on-and I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, but it sort of reads, in places, like, well, actually, like...you didn't make any choices at all. And I was wondering if it might not be different if, maybe, when you wrote, you weren't always ...under the influence.

The movie itself is one of the sadly-neglected greats of the 21st century, with a career best performance from Douglas (will he ever appear in a good film again?). But the novel he was writing? Probably would have been one of those eye-bleeding post-modern masterpieces so memorably satirized in Martin Amis' The Information. It would have been one interesting read.

2) The Necronomicon from The Evil Dead - Despite rumours to the contrary, the Necronomicon (first popularized in the writings of H.P. Lovecraft) is not a real work, although a few books have laid claim to the title since its inception. Sam Raimi's Evil Dead (followed by personal fave Evil Dead II, and then the very enjoyable Army of Darkness) put a gruesome visual face to the work, although its contents were markedly different from Lovecraft's.

"Bound in human flesh and inked in blood, it contains bizarre burial rituals and demon resurrection passages. It was never meant for the world of the living." Considering that it lays waste to everyone and everything but the invulnerable block of man muscle known as Bruce Campbell, its inclusion on this list is essential. And who wouldn't want to take a peek at its pages, I mean, it's practically a picture book. It's for kids! Just so long as you know the magical phrase to utter before touching its pages. Klaatu...barata...ni...? Necktie? Nectarine? It's definitely an 'n' word.

3) ??? from The Shining - It's never made clear what epic masterpiece Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) is trying to write between solo games of handball and terrorizing his family throughout the halls and corridors of the Overlook Motel. The novel (by Stephen King) posits that Jack is penning a play, but the format of the pages Stanley Kubrick shows us certainly don't look like a play was in the works, so let's assume it's a novel. Or would be, if Jack hadn't actually been typing All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy over and over and over. I've always wondered what he thought he was actually writing. I am certain that it would have been pretty damn freaky.

4) Jimmy James: Macho Business Donkey Wrestler from Newsradio - This is a fantastically funny bit from one of the great unappreciated sitcoms in television history. The set-up is thus (from the 4th season episode Super Karate Monkey Death Car): Jimmy James (Stephen Root), the borderline-crazy billionaire owner of radio station WNYX, wrote his autobiography, Jimmy James: Corporate Lion-Tamer. The book was a flop in the United States, but it was a surprise hit in its Japanese-translated version. Jimmy, ever the shrewd businessman, had the book translated from the Japanese back into English, resulting in the aforementioned Jimmy James: Macho Business Donkey Wrestler. The resulting reading (below) is a television comedy highlight.

The episode ended on one of my favourite Newsradio exchanges:

Jimmy: Do you think Ernest Hemingway ever gave a reading that bad?

Dave: Sir, I don't think Margeaux Hemingway ever gave a reading that bad.

Seriously, though, how could ever pass up this book? I think they should have released it. A runner-up in the 'mad television boss who writes a book' category: 30 Rock's Jack Donaghy (the peerless Alec Baldwin), with his little-mentioned but intriguingly-titled Jack Attack: The Art of Aggression in Business. Now, if we could just get Michael Scott to write a book, we'd be set.

5) Untitled Manuscript from DOA - This little-loved but actually pretty darn-well entertaining Dennis Quaid/Meg Ryan thriller centred around Quaid's beleaguered English professor and one-time literary wunderkind. After a night of heavy drinking, Quaid discovers that he has somehow been poisoned, and has only 24 hours to find his killer. I hate to give away the ending, but Quaid discovers he has been murdered because of an manuscript one of his students had given him to critique. In a fit of jealousy over how good the book is, a fellow professor (Daniel Stern) kills the student, and poisons Quaid, the end result of which would be that the book could then be published under Stern's name, thus resulting in tenure. Yes, tenure. Not often you see tenure as a motive for murder, but there you go.

In my mind, this could serve as a cautionary tale to Michael Chabon, the author of Wonder Boys (see above). His first novel (the critically-acclaimed The Mysteries of Pittsburgh) was discovered in exactly this fashion, and one wonders if the discovering professor ever had thoughts of mischief and mayhem before urging Chabon to find a publisher. Ahh, bygones.

6) A Sexual Suspect from The World According to Garp - This work of non-fiction, the autobiography of Jenny Fields (Glenn Close), starts as a surprise best-seller, becomes a massive feminist manifesto, starts up a cult (for all intensive purposes), and ends up getting Jenny killed by a crazed assassin for her efforts. With all that in mind, how could you not want to read it?

Unlike the titular hero (Jenny's son), we get far more of an insight into the book's power from the impact it has upon its readers. These are not your simple "Ohmigod I loved your book" sort of people. These are crazed fanatics of near Oprahesque proportions. Suffice to say, John Irving's novel goes into far greater detail, but in a movie of weak characters and missed opportunities, the character of Jenny Fields is the one element the moviemakers got exactly right.

7) Faster Than the Speed of Love from Family Guy - Brian, the talking dog, has made mention of the novel he's been working in several episodes. Brian has shown glimpses of greatness (or at least inspired plagiarism) in some episodes, but it all has come to a head in episode 602, Movin' Out, where Brian reveals the name of his long-in-gestasis opus:

Brian: I finally have a title.
Lois Griffin: Oh, what is it?
Brian: Faster Than the Speed of Love.
Lois Griffin: That is...that is the worst title I've ever heard.
Brian: No, it's the story of a boy who has to rescue his father, who's a pilot that's been taken captive by a militant Islamic country.
Lois Griffin: That's the movie Iron Eagle!
Brian: What? Is that - is that a recent film?
Lois Griffin: They made three sequels!
Brian: Yeah, well, in mine the boy's gotta gather all these old World War II pilots to help him rescue his father.
Lois Griffin: That's one of the sequels!
Brian: Well - well, in mine, one of the World War II guys is Japanese, but they accept him anyway!

It sounds absolutely horrible, but considering that Brian is one of the most inspired creations in cartoon history, I'd give him the benefit of a doubt, and would certainly rescue his novel from the bargain bin.

8) Death and Taxes from Stranger Than Fiction - As Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson) goes about her day writing her newest literary best-seller, the hapless Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) discovers that his existence might very well be the result of Karen's imagination, as her in-progress novel becomes a narration to his daily life. That she plans to kill off Harold justifiably does not sit well with him.

This is one of the rare instances where we get a true glimpse into the creation of a fictional book. Karen's narration forms a weird meta counter-point to Farrell's life, providing him with impulses and events before the actual event occurs. Is Farrell actually participating in life, or is he simply following orders? Some have found much to dislike in this Charlie Kaufman-like movie, but I find it to be sweet and disarming, and a lovely meditation on what existence actually represents to the individual. It certainly contains Ferrell's most compact and serious performance.

9) Horror in Hobb's End from In the Mouth of Madness - Sutter Cane (Jurgen Prochnow) is the world's best-selling horror novelist, and his newest release is flying off the shelves. One problem: people who read Horror in Hobb's End inevitably go batty and tend to attack people with axes. Annoying side-effect, that.

While the name Sutter Cane is meant as an obvious evocation of Stephen King, the title of the novel, along with the covers of Cane's books inside the movie and the imagery director John Carpenter employs clearly indicate Cane to be a variation of H.P. Lovecraft. With half-glimpsed tentacles, gaping maws, and reference to a world beyond comprehension, Cane's novels are of such a ferocity that they threaten to rip open the fabric of reality itself. Now that's a novel!

10) The Handbook for the Recently Deceased from Beetlejuice - After a tragic car accident, Adam and Barbara (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis) discover themselves ghosts in their own home, floating adrift with no idea what they are to do, save for the seemingly handy but terribly unhelpful copy of The Handbook for the Recently Deceased. A guide to the dos and do not dos of the living impaired, it can be understood by few, and abused by many.

The idea of such a self-help manual appeals to me, as I'm sure it does to most people; how else would I begin to understand the intricacies of ether manipulation? Sadly, the only way to actually verify the existence of said manual is to, well, die. I'll wait for the movie version.

So, there you have it, ten fictional books that demand to be brought to the shelves. Have I missed your favourite? Let me know, I'll update the list at a future point if I get enough suggestions.

A few quick reviews for your conisderation

It's been a little while since I updated my three regular readers, five irregular readers, seven imaginary readers, and two demon readers who haunt my dreams with their cries of "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!" so I thought I'd give a little shout out to several novels and collections I recently read and (it goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway) heartily recommend.

Iterations and Other Stories

Identity Theft and Other Stories

Robert J. Sawyer

These two collections from Canada's grand master of sci-fi are absolutely terrific reads. Sawyer is arguably the best-selling Canadian author on the planet, and has won approximately 41 awards for his work, including the esteemed Nebula, Hugo, and John W. Campbell awards. He has the unique ability to wield hard-science elements with a delicate touch, resulting in works that challenge the mind yet don't bog down the reader with theorems and equations. The man can write, and he's blessed with an imagination of vast potential and an adoration of all things scientific. Add in dashes of philosophy, and you've got the true heir apparent to Clarke and Asimov. And he's Canadian, did I mention that? Do you have any idea how rare it is to see science-fiction set in Canada? I don't have any statistics to back me up here, but I'm betting, not much.

These two collections dip into the stable of reliable and time-honoured science-fiction conventions; time travel, artificial intelligence, immortality, and alien visitations are all well-represented, but Sawyer brings to the usual tropes a fascination for plot twists, a genuine empathy for his characters, and some really, really cool ideas. The title story "Identity Theft,"along with its followup "Biding Time" co-mingle the concepts of robot bodies, immortality, and alien planetscapes with classic private eye conventions. "On the Surface" provides H.G. Wells completists with a compelling and Morlock-laden sequel to The Time Machine. "Shed Skin" provides a tantalizing treatise on what selfhood and identity mean when personalities can be swapped with other bodies as easily as breathing.

Iterations and Identity Theft are ideal primers for Sawyer's already-impressive output. Never less than thought-provoking, these two compendiums of Sawyer's imagination should be required reading for all persons who consider themselves fans of the genre.

The Monsters of Templeton

Lauren Groff

From the overtly fantastic to the subtly grotesque;

Lauren Groff's The Monsters of Templeton is a spectacularly weird, funny, and uncategorizable novel. I would classify it as a family-roots drama, with overtones of mysticism and magic realism, but labeling it as anything other than remarkable does it a disservice.

Willie Upton has returned to her hometown of Templeton in disgrace, licking wounds that won't heal at all easily. At the same time, a leviathan of the deep has washed shore of Lake Glimmerglass, sending the town into turmoil. Upon her arrival, Willie's mother informs her that she is the descendant of the town's founder Marmaduke Templeton. What follows is a historical descent into two centuries of character reminiscences and family dramas, as the town itself begins to feel the loss of a resident it never knew it had.

It's very difficult to classify Monsters into one single genre, and far easier to praise it as wondrous and strange. Groff has a Dickensian gift for sweeping family drama, and a gorgeous flair for imagery. I was sorry to see it end, which is likely the highest praise anyone can bequeath to a novel.

I'll have more substantive (read: longer) reviews of Rawi Hage's novel Cockroach up soon, as well as Neal Stephenson's massive missive Anathem.

Monkey droppings - Everybody Knows This is Nowhere by John McFetridge - review

Everybody Knows This is Nowhere
John McFetridge, ECW Press

Kelli relaxed. She'd seen the inside of a lot of Beamers and Mercs and, hell, even Land Rovers since coming to Toronto a month back. She looked at the guy, cheapskate biz boy in his thirties, and thought he wasn't so bad, really, just acting tough. It was always good to get the first one of the night out of the way.

She looked up and saw a man's face, floating, hanging in the sky. He looked her right in the eye.

Then he smashed into the windshield.

The cheapskate screamed like a girl.

And Kelli just stared at the face on the spiderweb of broken glass. The blood and bits of brain and bone. He must have fallen the full twenty-five floors.

From Everybody Knows This is Nowhere

After the publication of his debut novel Dirty Sweet, the parallels between John McFetridge and that master of crime fiction Elmore Leonard were readily apparent. Both novelists concern themselves with criminals slightly less smart than they put on, and police slightly smarter than they let on. Both imbue their primary settings (Leonard has Detroit, McFetridge, Toronto) with a heady grit and coarseness that elevates the status of the cities above that of narrative backdrops to that of major characters. Both write deliciously crunchy dialogue which sting the reader with their own unique urban patois.

Now, upon reading McFetridge's second, Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, it is apparent McFetridge is no mere clone of Leonard. Dirty Sweet was entertaining, but McFetridge could have settled at that point into a nice career as a second-rater with flashes of brilliance (read: Tim Dorsey). Everybody Knows showcases a writer coming into his own. Granted, the parallels with the master (what else could you call Leonard at this point in his career?) are still present, but McFetridge had broadened the distance between the two, creating a Toronto as dangerous-cool as Leonard's Detroit, yet somehow sharper, more angular. Leonard's Detroit is a grungy yet somehow loveable creation; you could see yourself living there, enjoying the dingyness. McFetridge's Toronto is permeated with grime and murk, both physically and morally. While his overall style may be closer to Leonard's, McFetridge's Toronto is far more malevolent in tone, closer to the bleakness of Ed McBain's fabled city of Isola in his 87th Precinct series [sidenote: Please read McBain, everyone. No better American writer of the police procedural has ever been produced.]. This Toronto is not a family-friendly city, but a metropolis of cynicism and spite; "[No] one noticed. Or no one cared. After all,it wasn't keeping people away from downtown shopping or bringing down real estate values. Toronto built its ghetto way out in the burbs, never thinking it was a growth industry."

McFetridge crafts a labyrinth and distinctly cinematic crime drama with Everybody Knows, flipping back and forth between drug dealers and police officers as they go about their daily routines. There's the detectives Armstrong and Bergeron, staking out a possible grow-op while embroiled in a missing child case; Bobbi, a woman with a faulty electronic tracking device on her ankle and a chance on making serious cash with her grow-op; Nugs, a thug with more smarts than you could guess; and more characters than can be easily accounted for. When you add in the mob, mcguffins, backstabbings and reversals, and dizzing subplots, you get one hell of a delicious read.

Plot-wise, Everybody Knows is a bit of a shaggy dog, with loose ends dangling everywhere, but that's part of its allure; these are a few days in the lives of its characters, where there is not so much a mystery as there is a confluence of circumstances that draws everyone together at different times. Where McFetridge really shines, much like as Leonard, is in his atmosphere, created by a narrative style so condensed and stark and frosted over by winter's chill it threatens to recast Leonard's already pared-down prose as overtly purple.

McFetridge is fast becoming the noir writer of the Canadian urban landscape (yes, there is too a Canadian urban landscape). Dirty Sweet hinted at the talent; Everybody Knows This is Nowhere stops hinting, and smacks you in the jaw.