Gary Paulsen: Woodsong

I read this with the intent of offering it to students for a reading assignment, but I am left with mixed feelings.  On the one hand, it is accessible and engaging.  On the other, it is upsetting and unsatisfying--especially structurally.  I can absolutely picture a student getting to the part where the dogs greedily devour the author's vomit, and refusing to read any further.  

 Aside from this and similar thematic issues, I am offput  by the way the theme is developed.  It feels like two separate, though related, books.  The first is a meditation on our place in nature, and the effect it can have on us--a solid and well-developed theme.  The second is a sport narrative, hitting all the customary beats along the way.  I could wish that the two ran in parallel, rather than in sequence, or at least that there was a return to the former at the end.  Instead of supporting and reinforcing each other, however, the two ideas are competing for attention, and by the end one has forgotten what the author was saying in the first place.  

Frankenstein (1931)

 It's hard to imagine a better example of an adaptation hijacking and replacing the source material.  There are examples, of course, of the adaptation being more popular.  I can't however, think of anything close to this phenomenon: of a movie adaptation not only altering the source material to such an extent as to make it unrecognizable, but then replacing it in the public consciousness.  Society's idea of the monster is undeniably this version--hulking, incoherent, childish--and not the philosophical, erudite original with which it shares nothing more than a father.  It is as if people lined up to see L.H.O.O.Q. instead of the Mona Lisa.  

Which is not to say that the movie doesn't deserve its place in the cinematic canon.  It is solid, filled with strong performances and directorial choices, and occasionally brilliant.   My favorite touch is that Karloff is uncredited, his name replaced with question marks in the opening titles.  And neither do I feel that one version is superior to the other; they are fully divergent works, and to compare them would be to compare Pando to Aspirin.