Thoughts from Michel Faber's article, notable for the shift from former Joycean artistic indifference to his work. Also interesting for how he perceives the adaptation as having its identity first & foremost as a text.
The closing paragraph:
When answering questions, over the years, about film and TV adaptations of my books, I have always maintained that no movie or TV series could ever change or damage my work.
The Crimson Petal and the White is a book, and it will win or lose the trust of each reader when they begin reading its pages. That relationship will go on. But, to my surprise, I've just seen something on TV that I feel has its own artistic integrity and its own emotional power. It's someone else's baby, but damn it, I care how it gets treated.
I mean to watch this. I've been advised to read the novel before. (I even chanced to walk past a second-hand copy laid out on a table at the Meadows' fair last summer, thinking I'd walk back to pick it up later on in the day; rather remiss of me.) Now friends have also been pointing me towards the tv adaptation.
(Costumes? Poetry? Period? Check. Romola Garai, Shirley Henderson & Richard E. Grant? Treble check.) I'll get onto Faber's original version this summer, I think.
