Time and Again

I recently wrote about an old favorite of mine, the fantasy novel Time and Again, by Jack Finney. It is the story of a man who travels back in time to New York in the 1800s. Once there, the story is compelling, precise in its details, and completely believable, the only far-fetched element being his actual methodology for returning to the past--he looks at old pictures and sort of thinks himself back through time. At least I thought this was far-fetched, until I got a look at the photographs I’ve reproduced here.

We can pretend that our work lives are a linear progression, day after day, neatly punctuated by weekends, with a summer vacation splitting each year down the middle. The truth, as usual, is far messier. If you work long enough at the same job, your experiences become layered like geological sediment. As of this past April I’ve worked in the General Research Division of the New York Public Library for thirty-two years. When it occurred to me that the library itself will be celebrating its centennial in 2011, I realized how much of its history I’ve actually participated in. Now, there are people--I’m sure you know a few--who seem to dwell principally in the past, always reminiscing about the old days and the peculiar characters who used to inhabit them…while their stories might hold your interest for awhile, it doesn’t take long before the tedium sets in. For the most part, I try to stay on the surface of the present moment, like a skater on a frozen lake; but with these photographs I’ve cracked through the skin of ice and gone plunging down and down. . .  read more »

"I wasted time, and now doth time waste me"

— Shakespeare, Richard II

This month marks my one-year anniversary as a blogger for the New York Public Library. A blogger is something I never thought I would refer to myself as, but I suppose there are worse things that can be said about a person. My first post on May 30, 2008 concerned the release of Sex and the City, a movie which featured the library among its New York locations. This was and remains my most-read post. I don’t kid myself into thinking that the world was so desperately waiting to hear from me; I happened to coincide exactly with the release of a much-anticipated movie, based on a television show which it seemed everyone (except me) had watched, which in turn was based on a popular novel.

Mulling over this early post set me to wondering if the movie Sex and the City had driven people back to the Candace Bushnell novel in a sort of self-generating circle. I like to think that almost anything can send us back to books and the experience of reading if we’re so inclined. Or is that simply a case of cock-eyed optimism? Once we become involved with movies and television, is there any time left over for reading; or have the other media splintered our concentration into so many different pieces that there’s no putting them back together again?

After a year’s worth of blogging, I can now confess my belief that one of the worst things about the 21st century is the number of electronic devices created exclusively to waste our time. There are television sets the size of doors with a hundred or so stations that we restlessly flip through, searching for something--anything-- to engage our imaginations. There are hand-held gadgets--the cell phones, iPods, and BlackBerries--that we fiddle with on bus and subway trips as our attention waxes and wanes. And there are the primary culprits, our computers, which leech away time like blood. Sitting before them, we’re like the Time Traveler who, during the trial run of his time machine, nudges the lever ever so slightly, sees nothing in his room has changed, and thinks his experiment a failure. . .until he notices the fresh candle worn down to a stub, indicating several hours gone by in an instant. (Was that a scene from the H. G. Wells novel, the 1960 movie, or the 2002 remake?) Do all these things damage our ability or even desire to focus on a book?

With a somewhat judicious approach, however, computers and gadgets can also lead to books. Despite my initial qualms about the Google book project, it has proved an important resource in my work as a librarian. Although I personally would not want to read a book downloaded onto a little gadget, that doesn’t make the existence of e-book readers any less real. A reader at the main reference desk once raved to me about his Kindle reader because he was visually impaired and could magnify the font size of his text as many times as required, giving me my first positive feeling about something I’d always looked on with a certain scorn. And, ironically, the internet is a great purveyor of real books, too. I admit that I have done my share of killing off the world’s bookstores by ordering lower-priced books online.

As I started to think about these matters, I began to ask myself questions about books being adapted into other media and whether that other media will ever lead us back to the real thing. Now, I know you’re reading this on a computer, and you probably have better things to do with your time, but assuming you’re still with me, I’d like to share these questions with you, give my answers after the break, and invite you to submit your own answers to any or all of them.

1. What was the last movie you saw, adapted from a novel, which disappointed you?

2. What book would you like to see adapted into a movie, even if you know it will ultimately be a disappointment?

3. Are there any theatrical works which have led you to seek out their literary source?

4. Does it work the same way for television? Name a show or shows which drove you to the fictional original. Or the other way around: fiction which drove you to television.

5. Can adaptations be overdone? Should there be a moratorium on adapting any particular author?  read more »