Five unadaptable books that could never be movies
The magic of cinema is a wonder to behold; it has the power to transport us to distant worlds, conjure vivid characters, and unfold stories that hook us from the opening scene to the very last frame. For as long as people have been making pictures, they’ve also been looking to great literature for adaptations. Actors give life to characters once bound within the pages of a book, and directors interpret the written word into powerful, moving images. But even with all the wonders of this medium, certain literary masterpieces pose a challenge to the cinematic form – books that, really, can never be made into movies.
These particular books, highly revered in the bookworm sphere, could even be considered ‘unfilmable’. They hold this status not because they’re devoid of suspense, not due to a lack of drama or character, but because their essence is inherently and unwaveringly ‘literary’. Their very storytelling fabric, rich in nuance and depth, simply can’t be captured, translated and appreciated fully on the silver screen.
By far, the most commonly cited example of the ‘unfilmable’ book is Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. Published in 1985, this raw and brutal portrayal of violence in the American West seems almost impossible for cinema. McCarthy’s prose is dense, poetic, layered with philosophical insights and vivid, gruesome, outright horrifying scenes.
The complexity and severity of the narrative, alongside its non-linear structure and often dream-like violence, would require more than just cinematic ingenuity to translate to the screen successfully. The novel’s richly descriptive language and unflinching view of humanity is something that is… perhaps best left to the reader’s imagination.
Likewise, Gravity’s Rainbow, the 1973 magnum opus of Thomas Pynchon, presents a daunting challenge to any prospective ‘adapter’. With its plethora of characters, an intensely complex narrative and a sprawling view of post-war Europe, it’s not difficult to see why this novel remains unadapted. There’s a reason why Inherent Vice, his stoner-detective novel published in 2009, is the only work to be adapted – fans of the author describe it as “Pynchon-lite”. The thing is, his work doesn’t just defy narrative conventions; it shatters them, blending high and low culture, scientific theories, and paranoid fantasies into a dizzying literary concoction. If it’s an uphill struggle to read the damn thing, just imagine what it’s like to try and adapt it.
Less well-known but equally impossible to translate to cinema is Lincoln in the Bardo, written by George Saunders. Why is this one so hard, you ask? This 2017 novel unfolds over a single night in a graveyard – and is narrated predominantly by a multitude of spirits. The challenge here isn’t just about translating the novel’s innovative form, which is a blend of historical fragments and spectral voices, but also capturing the profound sense of loss, confusion, and longing that permeates the novel. It is, at the heart of it, a metaphysical, existential and profoundly trippy portrait of Presiden Abraham Lincoln (yes, that one) grieving for his infant son.
Despite the runaway success of The Handmaid’s Tale, another work of speculative fiction by Margaret Atwood would not be so ripe for adapting. Oryx and Crake, published in 2003, imagines a dystopian future fraught with genetic engineering and environmental catastrophe. Its multi-layered narrative, rich with ecological and philosophical themes, seems resistant to condensation into a film format. Atwood’s dystopian worlds are built not just through action but through dense layers of science, history, and internal monologue, elements that would be hard to translate on screen. And just before you argue that The Handmaid’s Tale had the same elements, let me rebuff you with this: what The Handmaid’s Tale didn’t have was hordes of crazed half-human, half-animal hybrids and a former advertising executive as a protagonist who now lives in a tree.
Lastly, Accordion Crimes by the fantastic E. Annie Proulx. Published in 1996, it presents its own unique challenge; the novel tracks the journey of an accordion (the instrument) across generations and continents – a narrative device that binds together a vast array of characters across hundreds of years and thousands of miles. Its sweeping scope and intricate dynamics, rooted in the gritty realities and cultural complexities of immigrant life, would almost definitely lose their potency in a cinematic translation.
Five books that could never be movies:
- Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy, 1985)
- Gravity’s Rainbow (Thomas Pynchon, 1973)
- Lincoln in the Bardo (George Saunders, 2017)
- Oryx and Crake (Margaret Atwood, 2003)
- Accordion Crimes (E. Annie Proulx, 1996)
