Re: Re: Re: RARA-AVIS: Re: THE LONG GOODBYE (1973)

From: JIM DOHERTY ( jimdohertyjr@yahoo.com)
Date: 22 Aug 2003


Jim,

Re your comments below:

> In any event, I doubt that any of us is interested
> merely in changing your
> mind. I think the impetus on my side of this
> discussion is to make it
> clearer that some of your statements are still up
> for debate, and that to
> the reader/viewer who hasn't experienced TLG, that
> his mileage on viewing
> the film may well vary from yours, which you have,
> at the very least,
> implied was the final word, that any who disagree
> are wrong, plain and
> simple.

If I have an opinion, and I nearly always do, I don't have it because I believe it's wrong. I have it because I think it's right. It follows then that I MUST think that anyone who disagrees with that opinion is wrong. That's the point of having an opinion.

You disagree with me. Therefore you must think I'm wrong, plain and simple. So what? I'll defend my positions when they're challenged, but I won't lose sleep over people thinking differently than I do.

Why, then, if you're secure in your own point of view, should it bother you if I think YOU'RE wrong, plain and simple?
 
> And they always say that when the film DOES, in
> fact,
> ruin the book."
>
> "Does, in fact," you say. Well, I respectfully
> contend that Chandler's Long
> Goodbye is not ruined as a book and reading
> experience, even if one has seen
> and hated Altman's film. I experience them
> differently. If I wanted to
> experience them exactly the same, I'd eliminate one
> from the equation and
> read/view the other twice.

I think it was clear what was meant by "ruin the book," in this context. It means that the adaptation has, in some sense, betrayed the source material. So the author of the source material has to console himself with the knowedlge that his book, itself, is intact, and that the experience of reading that book is not vitiated by the movie's existence.

And the authors who say that always say that when they think the film betrayed their book.

To suggest that I was saying that Chandler's THE LONG GOODBYE is no longer worth reading thanks to Altman is to deliberately misinterpret my statement.

JIM DOHERTY

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