The Fault in Our Stars

“But it’s not a cancer book, because cancer books suck. Like, in cancer books, the cancer person  starts a charity that raises money to fight cancer, right? And this commitment to charity reminds the cancer person of the essential goodness of humanity and makes him/her feel loved and encouraged because s/he will leave a cancer-curing legacy. But in [An Imperial Affliction], Anna decides that being a person with cancer who starts a cancer charity is a bit narcissistic, so she starts a charity called The Anna Foundation for People with Cancer Who Want to Cure Cholera.”

-John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

* * *

The above quote occurs early in the fourth chapter of the young adult novel The Fault in Our Stars and is a good indication of how the rest of the book will go. The narrator is Hazel, a teenaged girl who has had cancer for three years. She carries an oxygen tank everywhere she goes, she attends a Support Group that seems highly unhelpful, she loves her parents, she reads poetry from Eliot and Ginsberg, and she meets (early in the novel, at the previously mentioned unhelpful Support Group) a cancer survivor named Augustus Waters, with whom she eventually falls in love.

This, too, is not your typical cancer book. Throw every comparison to A Walk to Remember or Lurlene McDaniel out of the window. Instead, think of the Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. In fact, John Green sends Hazel and Augustus to Amsterdam, where they have an incredible moment in the Anne Frank Museum, and I was reminded of why I loved and lamented Frank’s diary so much: I knew how the book was going to end. I got to know the characters, but I, the reader, understood that I could not be with the characters for long, even within the pages of the novel.

The beautiful thing about this book is that you know tragedy will occur. Hazel is very grounded, very accepting of the fact that she has a terminal cancer. She knows there is no cure; she knows the drugs she’s taking are only prolonging her life, not ending the cancer. She can, however, still lament the brevity of life. She can seeks to understand life in the short time she has.

Cancer is not portrayed as romantic, as in other novels. It is heartbreaking and devastating in so many ways. Hazel and Gus, and I and everyone else who’s read this, understand that.

* * *

In spite of the sadness, this book is funny and alive. The dialogue is fabulous–Hazel and Gus are quirky and intelligent, and their conversations often reminded me of conversations I’ve had with my best friend.

Green is also great at metafiction–reminding the reader that this is a novel, not reality. In the book, Hazel’s favorite novel is An Imperial Affliction, which Gus also reads. This novel drives a lot of the plot of the story as Gus chooses to use a “Wish” from a nonprofit organization to take Hazel to Amsterdam to meet the author of the novel. Hazel, in all her rereadings of the book, has hoped to discern what happens to the character after the book’s abrupt end. When she finally meets the author–who is a total jerk (to be nice)–he explains:

“But to be perfectly frank, this childish idea that the author of a novel has some special insight into the characters in the novel…it’s ridiculous. That novel was composed of scratches on a page, dear. The characters inhabiting it have no life outside of those scratches. What happened to them? They all ceased to exist the moment the novel ended.”

This tirade, combined with Green’s author’s note that the novel is a work of fiction, serve as a reminder of the power of a story: we can care so much about characters, be driven to powerful emotion, travel around the world just to discover more of the story.

This reminder made it easier on me to finish the book. I don’t remember the last time I cried so much while reading a book. And while I lamented losing characters who had become dear to me, I also remembered that their stories actually did end when I turned the last page, and I remembered that my life continues beyond the close of the book. And while I continue to live, I remember what I’ve learned from stories: that life and love matter, even when they’re oh-so-difficult.

Nietzsche and Me

I spent about two hours total of my afternoon reading “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” by Friedrich Nietzsche. Because I’m addressing the issue of language use and its ties to religion in dystopias, my office mate Tim recommended this essay to me on Thursday. On Friday, as I was reading a research guide to theorists with application to dystopia, I found another mention of this essay. So I read it.

Nietzsche is seen as a precursor to postmodernism, and that’s abundantly clear in this essay. He believes that man constructs a conceptual framework that is far removed from the original idea that it seeks to represent. Over time, this framework is presented as truth, and so man equates the concept with the truth. We tend to follow this method because of the natural laws of the universe. We can all agree to perceive that red is red, a tree is a tree. Thus, when society agrees that a concept or metaphor is true, man believes it to be so. Moreover, man constructs truth only in relation to himself, not to the universe as a whole because his perception is only one of myriad perceptions within the universe. The entire construction of concepts is a deception, but man has no qualms with deception so long as he is not being injured by the deception. Man hates a lie only because of the harsh consequences accompanying that lie.

Nietzsche goes a lot more in-depth, obviously, and he also goes on to discuss how science replaces language as the creator of the conceptual framework. But as I’m reading and attempting to grasp his ideology, I’m recognizing truth within his argument. Yes, we do construct truth that is based on our own experiences and perceptions. I cannot create a concept of a tree based on a bird’s perception. I can’t create a concept of a tree based on my brother’s perception.

My worldview, however, is vastly different than Nietzsche’s. I do not believe that God is dead (and we have killed him). Instead, I see, within humanity’s creation of a conceptual framework, the results of the Fall. Perhaps in Eden, Adam and Eve had the exact same perception of God and nature and truth and reality. But with original sin came difficulty and confusion. God may not be the author of confusion, but humanity is, and in seeking to control the universe in which we live (through the creation of metaphor and concept), humanity seeks to wrestle control away from God.

Yet the nature of God is not totally absent from this creation of metaphor and concept. Nietzsche argues that we create metaphor following the pattern of the creation of nature. As a Christian, I have to believe that we create because God created, and because we are created in His image, we, too, must create as a reflection of His nature. We fall short, however. We miss the mark; we get it wrong. Thus, we are left with metaphors and concepts that can only reflect the original idea, not innovate.

Maybe this post makes sense, or maybe it doesn’t. Right now, my brain is full of Nietzsche’s ideas, so my own argument might be convoluted as a direct result. But as I’m researching and reading and pondering the nature of British dystopian fiction, I’m learning about myself as a scholar and a Christian. My faith in a God of truth and light is strengthened when I am confronted by a world of lies and darkness.

In Mumford & Son’s “After the Storm,” Marcus sings, “You must know life to see decay.” Huxley and Orwell and the others created worlds in which darkness and chaos reign. And I certainly believe that our society, like the natural world, is moving toward entropy, becoming less ordered and more chaotic–this is a result of the Fall, after all. More and more I understand that I cannot store up my treasures on earth, for society is fallible and oppressive. But the ability to recognize truth within the darkness, and to sense the nature of God in philosophy that directly opposes even the presence of God, is a marvelous thing. I love that I can read Nietzsche and attempt to understand his philosophy and see truth in his perception of the world while simultaneously believing in and worshiping a God whose kingdom does not engage with chaos and deception.

“O brave new world that has such people in it”

Mustapha Mond checked him. “But [God] manifests himself in different ways to different men. In premodern times he manifested himself as the being that’s described in these books. Now . . . “

“How does he manifest himself now?” asked the Savage.

“Well, he manifests himself as an absence; as though he weren’t there at all.”

“That’s your fault.”

“Call it the fault of civilization. God isn’t compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice.”

-Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

This morning, I finished reading, for the first time ever, Brave New World. Because the novel is such a pivotal text for dystopian literature, I knew I needed to be very familiar with the story. In fact, in reading this book, particular the last few chapters (including the above quote), I’m beginning to wonder if I shouldn’t adjust my theories about dystopian literature to include the overwhelming absence and perversion of religious ideology in dystopian settings. After reading Brave New World (as well as P.D. James’ The Children of Men and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale earlier in the summer), I just don’t think I can ignore the fact that writers of dystopian fiction, in some way, must inevitably deal with religious identity in these futuristic societies.

Finishing Brave New World almost made me sick. When I read of Huxley’s fictional society shoving God out of every aspect of civilization–hiding Bibles in safes, removing the word “God” and the cross and the person of Jesus from the collective consciousness of its people–and when that society managed to finally abolish the very last remnant of Christianity in the form of a boy named John, I was enraged. I haven’t felt so much tension at the finish of a book in a long time (maybe since reading V for Vendetta, even).

Tension can be good, though. Tension involves wrestling with ideas and strengthening one’s faith. I guess I never imagined that writing my thesis on such a dark topic would be easy, but I certainly didn’t imagine that just reading a novel would so strongly affect my mood this early on. I’ll be immersed in this topic until April. I’m just beginning this road to the end.

Once more, though, I’m reminded of why I can choose to study such texts. I serve a loving God whose Kingdom is not of this world. Even if I face a future society from which God is utterly removed, I know Truth and the Author of Truth. The brave new world that I can anticipate is certainly not an earthly world, and it is certainly a place where Huxley’s dystopian civilization with never reign.

The Importance of Story

I used to blog more often. I’m not sure when that changed. I’ve actually had a few ideas for posts just tumbling about in my head, and this topic seems to address several of those ideas at once.

First, I found out late Friday night after checking my Gardner-Webb email that I passed my comps–the comprehensive exams that I needed to pass before graduating. All that’s left of my M.A. now is writing my thesis. For my comps, I had three parts: 1) a literary terms test; 2) an analysis of one passage of literature, using literary & historical contexts, literary theories, literary terms, etc.; and 3) a comparison/contrast of two passages of literature using those same areas. I wrote 11 pages (between parts 2 and 3) in three hours.

The email I received Friday was the confirmation that I’d passed part 3, the last confirmation I was waiting for. For this part of my exam, I compared the opening passage of Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God and the opening passage of Tim O’Brien’s story “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong.” On the surface, these stories are very different. A 1930s novel highlighting the journey of an African-American woman’s search for love and a story about soldiers in Vietnam should seemingly have little connection. But the truth is that both of these texts highlight the importance of storytelling: having a story to tell, the method and purpose of storytelling, and the importance and power of language used to tell one’s story. I was so stoked to find this connection between two of my favorite works that I studied in grad school.

Second, I seem to be becoming more entranced with superheroes lately. I’ve seen X-Men: First Class and Captain America in theaters this summer, and I’ve been reading more comic books as a result (not to mention that superheroes are prominent in all the geek blogs and newsletters I read on a daily basis). I find it interesting that I spent much of my time as an undergrad railing against fairy tales in our society, even writing my honors project about how fairy tales have influenced Christian women. I have a love/hate relationship with fairy tales, and I absolutely adore studying how these fairy tales and other folklore have survived in our culture. I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that superheroes are the new fairy and folk tales. We need superheroes to combat our super-problems in society, and we need someone to look up to. That’s always been true, and it will always be true. It’s just fascinating to me to see how the stories we revere change over time.

Finally, I did a creative writing activity with my class today. I put up pictures of several paintings–including Edvard Munch’s The Scream and Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks–and had my students work in groups to tell stories of what was going on in the pictures. Most of the stories were fascinating–the character in The Scream is schizophrenic, or a spy, or a cancer patient. But at the end of each discussion, the students wanted to know what the “real story” is. I tried to explain that sometimes we know what inspired the artist to paint, but sometimes we don’t. I was just once again amazed at how driven our society is by the concept of story. We need to know the “true story.”

I’m so grateful to be a child of a God who created Story. And I’m so amazed that I get to devote my calling and my life to studying and creating stories.

On Pretentious Endnotes

I started reading James Joyce’s Dubliners this afternoon for my Irish Lit class. I’ve sort of dreaded reading this book; Joyce has a pretty scary literary reputation (meaning students tend to loathe him for his verbosity). However, I’m finding that I’m enjoying Joyce (at least the first two short stories in the collection), so maybe the reputation Joyce has garnered is in regards to other works like Ulysses.

Anyway…the two stories I’ve read encompass a mere 20 pages in the book. But the editor of the Penguin Classics edition that I own gave 85 endnotes for those 20 pages. 85 ENDNOTES!!!!!

And most of them aren’t even helpful to the story. Guess what, editor? I know what “altar” and “chalice” and “Wild West” refer to. Those terms don’t possess some secret coding to which only you are privy. And while I might appreciate you pointing out the significance of “Wharf Road” to Dublin geography, I’d like for you to trust me enough to remember what Wharf Road is just a page later. Seriously…give me an endnote to refer to a previous endnote? Ludicrous! I also don’t need an entire page history of the power station on the banks of the Liffey River. And I know who Thomas Moore and Sir Walter Scott were. Is your target audience a middle-school reader? And what middle-school reader would be reading Joyce anyway?!?

All that to say…I’ll be reading very few of the endnotes of Dubliners. If I tried to read every endnote, I’d never have this book read by Wednesday.

End of rant. Thanks for reading.

Violence and Redemption

My major project for my first summer school class on Contemporary Trends in Literature is a review of literature on a contemporary trend (duh, right?). At first I had no idea what to write about; I was really interested in John Updike but unsure of a topic. Then, in the middle of class once night, I had a sudden thought (aren’t those great?) about violence as a catalyst for grace in one of Updike’s short stories. I started scrawling notes on my page and realized that this trend also appeared in Flannery O’Connor’s short stories–and then I found my topic.

Eventually, I dropped Updike altogether; there’s just too much good research on Flannery, and the essay should only be five pages–a bit more if necessary (I’m already past 5, of course).

So here’s my idea (and other critics’, of course): Flannery, the good Catholic living in the Christ-haunted South, saw violence as shocking enough to bring about redemption. Moments of violence are often so intense and real that salvation is a direct result.

On one of my long drives home from class one night, I thought about this intersection of violence and grace. My salvation story is far from violent. I didn’t watch my family get slaughtered by a convict called the Misfit and his cronies; I didn’t have a Bible salesman steal my wooden leg. Violence just isn’t a part of my own story of grace. Then I realized that even if, personally, I haven’t experienced that kind of violence, the grace that led to my own salvation is absolutely rooted in the darkest violence imaginable. What could be more violent that my Savior, the Son of God, being crucified? Flannery O’Connor, in interweaving grace and violence, is only re-telling the most beautiful story ever written: grace is so wonderful because it is triumphant over violence.

I’m so gonna love talking about this idea in class on Monday night.

On Intertextuality: Emerson, Meet Mumford

Ralph Waldo Emerson, founder of Transcendentalism and philosopher extraordinaire, occasionally amuses me. Take, for instance, this passage from Nature:

Nature is made to conspire with spirit to emancipate us. Certain mechanical changes, a small alteration in our local position, apprizes us of a dualism. We are strangely affected by seeing the shore from a moving ship, from a balloon, or through tints of an unusual sky. The least change in our point of view gives the whole world a pictorial air.

Okay, that’s not actually the amusing part yet. Be patient. I really love this concept that a change in perspective makes the world seem new. The amusing part comes at the end of the paragraph. Imagine, if you will, our austere and brilliant Emerson in this position:

Turn the eyes upside down, by looking at the landscape through your legs, and how agreeable is the picture, though you have seen it any time these twenty years!

Oh, my, gosh, can you imagine Emerson bending over to look over Walden Pond though his legs? Hilarious!

So, now that we’ve laughed at Emerson a bit, let’s move on to something even greater. I was listening to Mumford & Sons this week (as I do pretty much every day), and I thought about these lyrics from their song “The Cave”:

So come out of your cave walking on your hands
And see the world hanging upside down
You can understand dependence when you know the maker’s land

Okay, so Mumford & Sons’ version involves a little bit of gymnastics rather than just bending at the waist, but I love that the idea of looking at the world in a different way appears in both of these texts.

I also appreciate the ideas presented about nature in the two: Emerson talks about freedom (emancipation) while Mumford talks about dependence. [Side note: after reading SPIN's June cover story on Mumford & Sons in which Marcus Mumford talks about the importance of faith, I'm even more convinced that the biblical references throughout this album are very intentional.] At any rate, I think both Emerson and Mumford might agree that nature points to the existence of a Creator.

Now, for fun, watch this video of Mumford & Sons playing “The Cave” in a bookstore. Go on, you know you want to.

Lost and Found, Above and Below

Beginning in August, I’ll be starting the first semester of my thesis writing to finish my Master’s degree. I’ve decided to study British dystopian fiction, analyzing how language is used to shape identity. My theory is that dystopian fiction is often driven by the intense fear of losing one’s own individual identity and the loss of identity on a global scale. I had a meeting a few weeks ago with the professor who has agreed to advise my thesis. Dr. Stuart has a strong interest in science fiction, too (she even occasionally teaches a class in British science fiction!), and she gave me some book recommendations. One of which was Neil Gaiman’s novel Neverwhere.

Now, just for clarity, I’ll go ahead and preface this blog by stating that I won’t be using Neverwhere as one of the primary texts for my thesis. While language and identity certainly play roles in the novel, this work should be classified as fantasy, but not actually dystopian. Basically, I’m interested in how dystopian writers imagine the future of a society that exists now; I’m interested in works of literature that can show a worst-case scenario of continuing culture. Books like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, which portrays life after an apocalyptic disaster, and Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta, which shows the results of government gone horribly awry (and a text that I plan to use for my thesis) are dystopic because of these imagined futures.

NOTE: There are spoilers in this post. If you don’t want to know how the books ends, stop reading.

Gaiman’s novel is the story of two Londons that exist simultaneously. London Above, which is the world in which the protagonist Richard Mayhew initially lives, is the London that most of humanity knows–all the familiar landmarks; people working jobs, going to the pub, and living in flats; etc. London Below is the seedy underbelly–literally. If one falls through the cracks (like the gap in the tube station), one lands in London Below, inhabited by such characters as rat-speakers (who speak for the rats in London Below), assassins like the dreadful (and morbidly amusing) Misters Croup and Vandemar, and the fascinating teenage girl named Door, whom Richard actually encounters in London Above and attempts to save. Because of the setting–a contemporary, although fantastic setting–I won’t be able to use this for my theory about dystopian literature. However, I’ll probably be brilliant and throw in a footnote or two to compare it to other novels that I’ve read.

Mostly, I’m fascinated by Richard’s character in the novel. In London Above, Richard has a completely average life. He works an office job, is engaged to a woman with whom he doesn’t really have much in common, and lives a life that is just ordinary. When he meets Door and saves her, he is inadvertently brought into the world of London Below, and it is there that he finds his true identity. The book, though an amazing exploration of the two Londons, is really Richard’s rite-of-passage. He’s on a quest, he saves a lady, and he earns the title of Warrior by the end of the novel. Then, when he returns to London Above, he finds that the life he once lived is not enough for him. His real identity lies below.

I was about halfway through this novel before I realized that Neverwhere was originally a BBC miniseries back in 1996 before Gaiman adapted it as a novel. There’s a chance that, if I can find the episodes online, I’ll be spending some of my glorious week off this week watching the 6 episodes.

A Bibliophile’s Lament

Okay, I get that e-readers have enormous potential and are very popular right now. I have friends who have tried to convince me to buy a Kindle, and all along, I’ve declared that e-readers just aren’t for me. I love holding a book in my hand; I love browsing shelves of books–new or used, library or bookstore; I love the smell and feel of old books and discovering a really pretty copy of a favorite book on a used bookstore shelf. However, there’s one aspect of book-reading that I never even considered that I would miss with an e-reader: page numbers.

I don’t own an e-reader yet. But for simplicity’s sake (and cost-effectiveness), I downloaded the free Kindle application for my MacBook. The book I’m reading for class this week, called The Hidden Hand by E.D.E.N. Southworth, apparently only exists in current print in one edition that costs $26. Rather than buying a copy through the university bookstore, I decided to download the free copy for Amazon’s Kindle. Though it’s a bit inconvenient to have to read off my computer screen, that’s preferable to paying all that money for a book I’ll probably only read once anyway.

Still, I lament the loss of page numbers. In digital form, I have to measure my reading progress by a bar on the bottom of the screen, not the thickness of the pages still left. I also find that I like to know how many pages are in a chapter before I commit to reading it. It’s not as much fun push a button on my keyboard as it is to flip the pages in a book.

I really, really, really love books. And while it’s entirely plausible that I will one day in the relatively near future own an e-reader for the simplicity and convenience, I also know that I’ll never, ever give up my book-owning fanaticism. Or my love of page numbers.

I Am Number Four

It’s been awhile since I’ve reviewed a book–not because I haven’t read some review-worthy books, but because I haven’t had time or haven’t been able to figure out how to accurately summarize my thoughts.

However, I’ve got one for you now. I Am Number Four has received a lot of attention in the young adult realm lately–mostly because it’s just been made into a film. And, like the good reader that I am, I promised myself that I would read the book before seeing the movie (even though Civil Twilight’s song “Letters from the Sky” is on the soundtrack!).

All right, the premise: it’s science fiction (yay!). The title refers to the novel’s protagonist. He is an alien from a planet called Lorian. He and eight other children, along with each of their Cepans (like Watchers…sort of) and the pilot of the spacecraft, managed to escape Lorian during a global war in which the Lorians’ enemy, the Mogadorians, killed the Lorians to take over their planet. The Mogadorians had used up all the resources and their own planet and needed a new home.

The novel follows the fourth child and his Cepan, Henri. Every few months, Four and Henri move to a new small town in an effort to keep Four’s identity secret. Four changes his name each time (he goes by John Smith during the events of this novel). The numbering of each child is important. The Mogadorians have come to Earth to track down the nine children. Once they kill the nine, they can then begin to take over Earth (a planet much larger and more suited to the Mogadorians’ needs). But there’s a curse on the children for their protection: the Mogadorians can only kill the children in order of their number. (I don’t recall whether the number represents birth order or something else. That wasn’t clearly explained.) Every time one of the kids dies, each of the remaining nine gets a ring burned around his or her ankle as an alert that one of their number is gone. The novel opens with Three’s death, which is why Henri and Four must move yet again.

They arrive in Paradise, Ohio, where John soon meets a beautiful girl named Sarah and befriends a sci-fi geek named Sam. From there on out, it’s just what you’d expect from an alien-pretending-to-be-human, coming-of-age tale. John’s in love for the first time, has a best friend for the first time, experiences the arrival of his Legacies (his special abilities as one of the nine–he’s fireproof and able to employ telekinesis), and struggles to decide how to tell both Sam and Sarah about his true identity. And, of course, the Mogadorians find him. Fighting ensues. People discover his secret. Enemies in his high school become allies in the fight against the Mogadorians.

I expected this book to be epic. My favorite parts of this book, as I also expected, were the backstory: how Four and Henri arrived on Earth; why they left to begin with; folklore, history, and tradition associated with Lorian. In general, what I love most about science and/or speculative fiction is the ability of an author to create another world. And Pittacus Lore (a pseudonym that I’ll discuss more in a moment) sets up an interesting world.

But the execution of this story was merely good. I expected something phenomenal, and I didn’t quite get that. At times, the dialogue seemed a bit off, a bit too adult-trying-to-be-teenager. At other times, minor details in the story weren’t explained enough, and in science fiction, the beauty is in the details. For example, when the Mogadorians arrive, Four flees his school and goes back to his house. His girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend Mark (and, therefore, Four’s high school enemy) is sitting at his kitchen table on Four’s Cepan’s computer. It’s never explained why he’s there or how much he knows, but suddenly, Mark is fighting alongside Four and his friends. I was seriously bothered by the inconsistency in Mark’s attitude.

Nonetheless, the story kept me (mostly) interested. I read the book in a few days, and I’m looking forward to the movie. It may be one of those books that works better visually than textually. And I’ll definitely read any sequels that come out. But I’m not dying to know what happens next, as I did with the Hunger Games trilogy or the Chaos Walking trilogy.

One last thing about this book: Pittacus Lore is a pseudonym (obviously). The name will somehow come into play with the history of Lorian–there are references in this first book. I assumed, at first, that Lore was a new author on the scene and just established a pseudonym to go along with the content of the book. However, I searched him on Google after I noticed the first textual reference to a character named Pittacus, and I discovered that Pittacus Lore is actually a collaboration of James Frey and Jobie Hughes. (In fact, in the book, Henri creates new documents for Four to use in the future. Two of those names are “James Hughes” and “Jobie Frey.” Clever.) James Frey is the author of A Million Little Pieces, the “memoir” that Oprah chose for her book club several years ago that was later revealed to be a total fabrication. Frey had written a novel and published it as a memoir, sparking loads of controversy in the publishing world. It turns out that not only is Frey still publishing under his own name, but he’s also working on tons of projects using a variety of pseudonyms. Pittacus Lore is just one of those. This discovery about the real author may have had something to do with my disappointment with the book. I despise a lack of integrity, and no matter how great the writing or the story is, I already had a bad opinion of Frey.

All this to say, I would recommend this book. Just know that it has a few issues, and I wouldn’t rank it among the absolute best young adult novels I’ve read.

Here’s the trailer for the film. I’ve already spotted some differences between the book and the film, but I’m looking forward to seeing it nonetheless: