(And, on a tangent note, if there's a more overpraised phenomenon than the relentlessly shrill, ham-handed The Sopranos, we haven't found it. It's a measure of the relentless evisceration of standards and expectations that David Chase has been anointed the Dickens of our time. We now fully understand John Banville's incredulity at the public embrace of Saturday.)
Ironically - from your point of view, anyway - Banville is a big Sopranos fan.
Posted by: crocodile | July 12, 2007 at 01:15 AM
Additionally, the problem here is that Freeman didn't cite any specific critic making the Dickens comparison in his flimsy article -- thereby self-sabotaging his ridiculous claim from the starting gate.
But what's so wrong with narratives being shaped by different mediums? Graham Greene's novels were inspired by the medium of film -- and one can convincingly argue that it influenced those wonderful colons. So what's wrong with multiple narratives in multiple mediums exactly? By that silly logic, we should tsk-tsk John Banville for having the temerity to be inspired by paintings and even you, Mark, should be taken to task for having the effrontery to offer literary criticism on the Web when every snob knows that it can only be in a print medium.
An interesting article on the subject of novels and other mediums here:
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?search_term=comic+novel&id=9276
Posted by: ed | July 12, 2007 at 04:03 AM
I've never heard anybody suggest that The Sopranos was about to put the novel out of its misery. But if you want a more mindlessly overpraised phenomenon, I've got one right here: the Harry Potter books.
Posted by: James Marcus | July 14, 2007 at 06:04 PM