One thing, about reading, is that when a sentence knocks you out you can stop for a minute and soak it in. Those holy pauses in reading that a movie doesn’t offer, because you have to keep paying attention to what next, and what next.

Anyway, I think my overall impression is that the book goes farther in both directions– beautiful and ugly– than the movie. The movie was quite a tearjerker, but somehow the tears seemed too easy. They weren’t as satisfying as those moment of intense beauty that the novel offers. The gruesome moments are all too familiar in movies. They were horrible, yes, but again an image can never take me as far as something written. This may just be my own type of literacy, though– I’m far more sensitive to words than images. One final comment– in the book, the father tells the son not to look at things, because once the image is there you can’t forget it. That seems relevant to the notion of a film made of this movie, somehow. It’s also interesting in terms of what I’ve been thinking of about words and images. I guess images do have more staying power with me. But they are mute.