Monday, November 22, 2010

BECAUSE I DON'T MICROANALYZE ADVERTISING ENOUGH AT WORK: I'm cleaning out the DVR while packing tonight so am not as aggressive as I might be about fast-forwarding through commercials, and caught a commercial for Eat Pray Love on DVD. I was struck by some of the language in the commercial, which referenced the director's cut featuring "scenes from the bestselling novel" that you didn't see in the theatre. I'm no scholar of the book, but wasn't the entire point of Eat Pray Love that it was a memoir rather than a novel? Has there been some sort of fabrication scandal I wasn't aware of?

19 comments:

  1. Somehow "novel" has come to be synonymous with "book." It's incredibly annoying when you teach, say, history, and students insist on calling everything a novel. Even when expressly told that this chaps historians' hides.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous11:25 PM

    A few weeks ago, I stayed in Trump's hotel on the Las Vegas strip.  They sell all his books in the gift shop.  I was looking at "The Art of the Deal," which is supposed to be all about his advice on negotiating, memories of his experience, etc.  I noticed on the back cover that it was labeled "fiction."

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oops.  That "guest" was me.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Professor Jeff8:54 AM

    What Adlai said.  I'm getting a pile of book reviews today, and even though most of these students are upper-class history majors, I fully expect to see several of them refer to the scholarly study under review as a "novel."

    I think the problem is that kids today (harrumph harrumph) don't read any books other than novels.  In high school they're assigned novels in English class, but they never have to read nonfiction books (besides textbooks) in other classes.  Outside of school, the only books they might read are novels (Harry Potter, Twilight, etc.).  So when they enter college, they really have no experience with nonfiction books -- which not only leads to the bizarre use of "novel" that Adlai notes, but also makes it difficult to assign such books in the first place, since students simply don't know how to read nonfiction.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Eric J.8:54 AM

    At least that was probably accurately labeled.I doubt anything the short-fingered vulgarian would write about himself (or have a ghostwriter write about him) would be accurate.

    Really I just wanted to say "short-fingered vulgarian."

    ReplyDelete
  6. Nancy9:08 AM

    I can't imagine what a Director's Cut would add to that movie- it was butt-numbingly long as it was.

    ReplyDelete
  7. RandomRanter9:32 AM

    I also supect that in the post-Frey age, such things get tagged fiction far more often, as a CYA method. 

    ReplyDelete
  8. RandomRanter9:33 AM

    I also supect that in the post-Frey age, such things get tagged fiction far more often, as a CYA method. 

    ReplyDelete
  9. RandomRanter9:33 AM

    I also supect that in the post-Frey age, such things get tagged fiction far more often, as a CYA method. 

    ReplyDelete
  10. Jennifer9:49 AM

    At the very least, the extra scenes need to explain the end of the "open my heart" story. I was really ticked they didn't reveal how that ended in the movie.

    This is why I like Netflix, though: I can rent stuff just to watch the extras.

    ReplyDelete
  11. gretchen1:01 PM

    How do you read nonfiction?  This is a serious question.  I've always found that I enjoy non-fiction more, and get more out of it, when I read it like a novel.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Professor Jeff1:21 PM

    Well, I could give a whole lecture about the challenges of reading nonfiction (especially academic nonfiction).  The key issue, I think, is that my students have enormous trouble figuring out "what's important" in a nonfiction book.  In a novel, they can be swept along by the narrative, and they don't really need to worry about prioritizing the information they're reading, since it's all seen as serving the basic plot.  In nonfiction (again, especially academic studies), they need to learn how to read strategically, to use the structure of the book, of individual chapters, even of paragraphs to figure out the relationship between big themes, subthemes, and supporting details.  Students' tendency, unfortunately, is to think that EVERYTHING IS IMPORTANT -- hence their habit of highlighting 95% of the text.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Andrew1:23 PM

    Is there a way to register dislike? Not for the comments themselves, but for the sentiment that novel and book are synonyms. Hearing that hurts my brain. But then, I generally prefer nonfiction to fiction. 

    ReplyDelete
  14. Watts1:45 PM

    Jenn - I've been disappointed sometimes that Netflix discs (and the ones at local video rental places) don't have the extras - they say "RENTAL COPY" on them and there you are.  Was true for both Fantastic Mr. Fox and The Hangover.  Both movies that I wanted to see the extras on DVD and was apparently going to have to buy, not rent, to do so.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Joseph J. Finn2:45 PM

    Yeah, that's a studio thing (see also Netflix's agreement with Warner to delay rentals by 30 days so Warner gets a jump on the DVD sales).

    ReplyDelete
  16. Jenn.4:47 PM

    This may explain why I read relatively little nonfiction.  I do enough intense reading at work, that even with nonfiction in which I am sincerely interested, I have trouble making myself invest the time.  I was actually saying last night that I find mysteries satisfying---I can enjoy the reading without super-heavy investment, but they aren't utterly lightweight.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Marsha5:13 PM

    This is part of why I don't read biographies for fun. They're not fun. They're work. Most of the non-fiction I read is either what I call "pop science" or about baseball or pop culture. For me, that's non-fiction that's fun.I read too much non-fun stuff at work to read non-fun stuff at home.

    That said, I'm glad I learned how to do that kind of reading, and I'm sad these kids today don't know how. An important skill.

    ReplyDelete
  18. calliekl7:39 PM

    I was never assigned a non-fiction non-textbook before college, aside from The Diary of Anne Frank.  The only kind of nonfiction I enjoy now is memoirs. I try other books, I feel like I should enjoy them, but I always get bogged down. I would totally take a class about how to read non-fiction!

    ReplyDelete
  19. gretchen8:43 PM

    This is all interesting, because I think that's part of what I was getting at when I said that I enjoy non-fiction more when I read it like a novel.   There may not be a plot, per se, to propel you through non-fiction, but there is an argument.  There is forward motion.  And if you go with the forward motion, instead of getting bogged down in the details, it's easier to understand the big picture of the book.  What point is it making? What is the big idea?  There is a big idea and if you follow it, the prioritization will come organically. 

    ReplyDelete