Why novels are a richer experience than movies
Novels solve what philosophers call "the problem of other minds." It's the problem that we can never know for sure what a person is thinking, or, from a metaphysical perspective, if they even have a mind at all! We must infer, we must guess, we must speculate. Novels, however, take place in an imaginary world where the problem of other minds does not exist, where mental states, like rage or ennui, can be referred to as directly as one does tables and chairs. There's an entire academic field that highlights this, like Dorrit Cohn's Transparent Minds, published in 1978, in which she emphasizes that this is "the singular power possessed by the novelist: creator of beings whose inner lives he can reveal at will." Or as another scholar put it: "Novel reading is mind reading." … (Nautilus)
Massimo Pigliucci
https://open.substack.com/pub/figsinwinter/p/suggested-readings-530?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
(Successor site to CoPhilosophy, 2011-2020) A collaborative search for wisdom, at Middle Tennessee State University and beyond... "The pluralistic form takes for me a stronger hold on reality than any other philosophy I know of, being essentially a social philosophy, a philosophy of 'co'"-William James
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My Philosophy is to ALWAYS READ THE SOURCE MATERIAL before I judge something, as an adaptation is just that, an adaptation, someone else's interpretation of the source material.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. I'm always surprised when a book I've loved is rendered adequately on screen. Maybe it's not a fair comparison, but I say: always read the book.
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