daisy-buchanan

Duality Is Their Reality

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Today is the first day of winter in the Northern Hemisphere, but it was also still autumn for a few hours. So, a two-faced day.

As in real life, some fictional characters also have two faces — offering different personas at different times and in different situations. This can be among the many building blocks involved in making a character complex, nuanced, and three-dimensional.

Perhaps the most literal depiction of a Janus-like character is the star of Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The duality in Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novel happens when Jekyll, a basically good man with some repressed dark tendencies, takes a potion that turns him into the evil Hyde.

But things are usually somewhat more subtle when it comes to characters with binary tendencies.

For instance, the villainous Count Fosco can also be quite charming in Wilkie Collins’ 1860 classic The Woman in White.

Much more recently, we have Percival Everett’s 2024 novel James, which reimagines Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the vantage point of escaped slave Jim — after Twain mostly focused on Huck in his 1884 book. The duality here is that James, in a recognizable self-preservation maneuver, speaks in a different way (intellectually) to his fellow Black people than to white people (with whom he plays dumb). James, which I read last week, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction earlier this year.

Jim’s dual persona reminds me of female characters who are smarter and/or more strategic than they let on. Daisy Buchanan of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925) would be one example.

Returning to contemporary literature, we have Val McDermid’s crime series about cold-case detective Karen Pirie. She is mostly tough while on the job — both with suspects and with the people (including sexist men) she works with — while Pirie’s more vulnerable side emerges in her personal life.

Then there are the characters who are warrior-like in battle even as they can have more-tender aspects when not fighting. Jamie Fraser of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series certainly has those two elements.

Sometimes, two parts of a personality exist more consecutively than simultaneously — as with young Neville Longbottom of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. He starts off bumbling and insecure, but eventually becomes quite courageous. Perhaps that arc is more maturity than duality.

Any comments about and/or examples of this topic?

Misty the cat says: “It’s the first day of winter. Autumn must still be around here somewhere.”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — which has a dystopian novel theme as it discusses 19 school-district jobs saved and 84 not saved (evoking George Orwell’s 1984) — is here.

Books Helped Robert Redford’s Film Career Shine

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A screen shot from The Natural movie starring a man who hit a home run in life.

Like many other performers, Robert Redford appeared in a number of films inspired by books. I’ll discuss several of those screen adaptations in this post, which appears five days after the sad news of the iconic star’s September 16 death at age 89.

The first movie that came to mind was The Natural (1984), based on Bernard Malamud’s 1952 novel of the same name. Redford starred as baseball player Roy Hobbs, who returns to the game in midlife after being shot as a young man. (The Hobbs name is an amalgam of real-life baseball legends Ty Cobb and Rogers Hornsby.) Quite a compelling and affecting motion picture, which — as is often the case with Hollywood — has a happier ending than the one in the more nuanced book.

A decade earlier, another major role for Redford was in the 1974 movie version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 classic The Great Gatsby. Redford was Jay Gatsby to Mia Farrow’s Daisy Buchanan.

I didn’t realize until researching this post that 1973’s The Way We Were movie — in which Redford co-starred with Barbra Streisand — was based on Arthur Laurents’ 1972 novel rather than on a totally original screenplay.

Redford was not only an actor but a director, producer, longtime champion of independent films, and laudable activist for the environment and other causes. Several of those multiple talents came together for the 1988 movie version of John Nichols’ 1974 novel The Milagro Beanfield War. The film — whose cast included Ruben Blades and Sonia Braga — didn’t do well at the box office, but Redford received praise for his direction of it.

I’ve read Nichols’ and Malamud’s books, but not Judith Guest’s 1976 novel Ordinary People, for which Redford won the directing Oscar for the 1980 movie version starring Mary Tyler Moore, Donald Sutherland, and Timothy Hutton. I’ve seen the film, which is excellent.

Redford of course also acted in movies based on notable nonfiction books — including 1937’s Out of Africa memoir by Isak Dinesen (Redford co-starred with Meryl Streep in the 1985 film) and 1974’s Watergate-scandal-focused All the President’s Men by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (Redford played Woodward opposite Dustin Hoffman as Bernstein in the 1976 movie). I’ve read both books, and the films did each of them justice even as their main characters were more glamorous than their written-page counterparts.

A great late-career role for Redford was in the 2017 screen adaptation of Kent Haruf’s very poignant 2015 novel Our Souls at Night, about an older couple’s twilight-years romance. He co-starred with Jane Fonda, repeating a charismatic pairing from several earlier films.

I’ll close with this: Redford lived a life that we’ll remember with affection and admiration for his talent, his kindness, and his social conscience. People such as the cruel Trump and his dreadful toadies will be remembered quite differently when they’re gone.

Any thoughts on Redford, the films and books mentioned in this post, or any book-inspired Redford movies I might have missed? (My post included only titles for which I read the book or saw the film or both.)

Misty the LGBTQ-friendly cat says: “I have two mums, and I’m fine with that.”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Misty says Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, and includes many encounters with celebrities. (But not Robert Redford. 🙂 )

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about an exploding school budget deficit and a Township Council member’s sudden resignation — is here.