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Literature on the marquee

Books are riding movie waves and movies are riding book waves, writes SERISH NANISETTI

ICE-AGE REVISITED The Mammoth from `Ice Age 1' discovers its companion in the next Ice Age.

In the beginning there was the Word. And the Word was with God. And the Word was God.

Sai Ramesh, a V Standard student, picks up the colourful Ice Age-II off the newsstand at a bookshop in Somajiguda. Flips through the glossy, colourful, illustrated books one after the other for readers of different ages. Shrugs and puts them back. "They are so dumbly simple," he gives the reason for his disappointment as he walks out following his mother.

Once the movie is released, this same kid will come and buy the book, the shop hand is sure. "Right now Chronicles of Narnia is moving like hot cakes," he says drawing a trend figure. A. Asif of Husain Books concurs with a twist. "Lot of people who are coming to pick up Chronicles of Narnia think it is a new book, they don't know that C. S. Lewis wrote the eight-part series and the movie is based on the second part. Now, it is one of the fastest moving items," he says.

On Sunday morning, as the globalised village watched, the scriptwriters of Brokeback Mountain accepting the Oscar salaamed the word and wordsmiths. Larry McMurtry put it as: "I am going to thank all the booksellers of the world. Remember, Brokeback Mountain was a book (actually a short story by Annie Proulx in the New Yorker) before it was a movie. From the humblest paperback exchange to the masters of the great bookshops of the world, all are contributors to the survival of the culture of the book. A wonderful culture, which we mustn't lose."

The books are not disappearing. Riding the movie wave, HarperCollins has released Chronicles of Narnia in four flavours: a set of eight books, all the novels in one volume, the one volume on which the movie is based The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe and a children's version.

As booksellers woo the audience-reader, parents too are delighted, as children who wouldn't read anything beyond their textbooks are now flipping through the pages at a nipping pace. "My daughter is just waiting for the exams to get over so that she can get back to books she loves. She's set aside a budget to purchase all the books that have been made into movies. I am delighted that she is going to read some good prose contrasted with the low standard of lessons she currently has," says P. Bhanu, whose daughter's VIII std exams will end in mid-April.

The trend that can be partially back to Harry Potter and Lord of The Rings, is now well and truly driving the book trade. Even Pogo has done something for making the children discover Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl. From just literature it has transmogrified into a multimedia adventure where Da Vinci Code has been released with all the visual elements that form part of the story like The Last Supper, the Vitruviun Man and other incidental pieces of Brown's novel in an expensive coffee table book. Taking a page out of the publishers in the West, some zip has been added to the otherwise sedate linguistic press. Parineeta, the story written two centuries back by Sarat Chandra Chatopadhyay is now a paperback in English. It joins the august company of Mangal Pandey which has also been made into a movie. Rupa has released both books and the sales though not brisk are not bad either, according to booksellers.

Read a book, watch a movie and plug into the world.

LOVE AND LONGING Keira Knightley in a still from `Pride and Prejudice'

Merchandising by another name?

Is book merchandising any different from the toys, dolls, Ts and fashion accessories?

By a mile and a yard. Steven Spielberg's Munich gives the writing credit to George Jonas' Vengeance but it is the other version of the story by Simon Reeve One Day in September that is rising in book charts. Same with Chronicles of Narnia.

Though the movie is based on The Lion, The Witch and The Cupboard episode, it has rekindled interest in totality of C. S. Lewis' works.

But Jane Austin is another story altogether, the umpteenth reprising of her: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife... " has kept the book in the focus of arclights as well as book charts both in India thanks to the forgettable Bride and Prejudice with Aishwarya Rai and the much more sumptuous Pride and Prejudice with Keira Knightley.

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