Writers at the Movies: 26 Contemporary Authors Celebrate 26 Memorable Movies

Though writing and making movies involve somewhat similar creative processes, we rarely read detailed commentary by novelists and poets about specific films. This collection, while not film criticism per se, is a fascinating look at how one set of creative minds can view another. All superbly written, the pieces here (16 new, 10 reprinted) take a variety of tacks on their topics. Salman Rushdie's re-visioning of The Wizard of Oz is a dazzling meditation on the meaning of home in both the film and his own life, while J.M. Coetzee's reflections on John Houston's The Misfits dwell on the harsh reality that while we may see this movie (and all film) as consciously constructed ""art,"" it was a terrifying reality for the wild horses involved. Charles Baxter's nuanced and illuminating comparison between Davis Grubb's novel The Night of the Hunter and Charles Laughton's brilliant film version explores both works' complicated and frightening depiction of the destroyed human body. Perhaps the most impressive essay in the book is Stephen Dobyns's lengthy analysis of Fred Wiseman's shocking Titicut Follies, a once-banned 1966 documentary of life inside a Massachusetts correctional institution at Bridgewater. Dobyns communicates all the movie's horror, while standing at enough of a remove to let us see it as an insane comedy of human frailty. This evocative and challenging collection will captivate devot s of film and literature. (Nov.)