On the subject of adptation

It
really is quite impossible. To adapt Moby Dick, I mean. Oh, sure – it is
possible to adapt the plot of Moby Dick – that of ship's mad
captain going on a revenge quest against a whale that took its leg, only to
lose of himself and entire crew (Ishmael notwithstanding). That is easy enough
– and has been done in film, comic books, operas, TV specials, albums even
other books (abridged versions mostly). The plot is easy, its everything else
that is hard.
How
for instance can one adapt to other medium the long narrative meditation on
whiteness? The endless celebration of whaling and its history? The
encyclopedia-length biological excerpts? You can't. movies have running time
(usually up to three hours), tv shows their broadcasting limitation, comic-books
their page counts. Try make a movie out of every word in Moby Dick and you'll
end up with a twelve hour or more disaster (not unlike that of the infamous
1922 adaptation of Frank Norris's McTeague which ran for nine straight
hours and was deemed unwatchable – the full version of which is not lost to
history).
'So
what,' that adaptors would say, 'when transferring from one medium to another
things are bound to change.' Which is true enough – it is quite possible to
successfully work a book to screen by cutting out 'excess' meat. James Ellroy's
excellent LA Confidential lost much of its dramatic parsonage and
had the duration cut from years to months in its cinematic adaptation and it is
still a magnificent movie (by the author's own admission, and Ellroy is known
for hating pretty much everything). It works because the fi, still got the
essential heart of the novel – about the corruption behind the glamour of early
Hollywood, about the racism and violence of the so-called 'greatest generation'
about the brutal nature of police work. Those were recognizable in the movie as
they were in the novel.
Now
try this with Moby Dick – ignore the plot and try to say yourself what
it is, essntialy, about… it's about life as a whaler, it's about obsession,
it's about revenge, it's about unknowable nature of god, it's about America,
it's about the literature, it's about the nature of knowledge, it's about the
destruction of nature by capitalist interests, it's about X and Y and every
letter of the alphabet. The only thing we critics can agree about the ultimate
nature of Moby Dick is that they cannot agree; and because no one can
put the finger of what the novel is about no one can actually adapt it
properly. So the adaptors keep the only thing they can agree on (the plot) and
cut away everything else – yah, it's a good a plot, but the book does not begin
and end with it, if it were just the plot and adventure it would be closer to Treasure
Island (which is a good book, but it's not Moby Dick).
That
is probably why the best adaptation is Ray Bradbury's
novella-cum-radio-special Leviathan
'99, in which a young astronaut Ishmael (and his new alien spider-thing
friend Quell) joins a spaceship to chart comets in the year 2199, only tio
discover it's blind captain wants to destroy the comet that blinded him… yep,
that is Moby Dick in space only instead of following the plot to it's
letter it adds a truly unexpected twist to the nature of the comment and sets
out to make its own points about vengeance, loneliness, alienation and other
themes. It uses Moby Dick as a springboard to make its own universe
instead of slaving away to somehow cream the original into a new framework, and
it is all the better for it.