Stanislaw Lem Solaris (1961)
I've always avoided Tarkovsky, and by association, his adaptation of Solaris. I'm sure he's a cinematic genius, but I was introduced to his work as just the sort of thing you like. This is usually the kiss of death for me, almost always amounting to it being just the sort of thing I hate because the recommendation has come from an idiot who doesn't know me anything like so well as they think they do. The second occasion of my being told that Tarkovsky was just the sort of thing I like was facilitated by [name withheld in case he happens to be reading] who expressed this idea by lecturing me at length for a full twenty minutes before I was able to interrupt, pointing out that actually I had a hunch Tarkovsky's work probably wasn't my bag at all. He droned on regardless for another twenty minutes before I was again able to get a word in edgeways, this time attempting to diffuse the increasingly uncomfortable situation with levity.
'Go on,' I quipped, 'push your glasses up your nose and say, as my producer said to me…'
He spared me a stony glance then continued his monologue. I suppose it's possible that he'd never seen The Two Ronnies, just as I'd never seen Solaris.
Anyway, no-one ever described Lem's original novel as just the sort of thing I like, never mind acknowledging its existence as an early version of Tarkovsky's film taking the form of printed words describing what would eventually appear on the screen; and I gather he was pals with Philip K. Dick by some definition, so it therefore seemed to be worth a punt. Unfortunately, according to Mark Hodder, what I have here is a fairly poor translation.
Solaris presents some wonderful ideas, particularly regarding extraterrestrial life, here imagined in such a way as to reduce most other authors to hacks busily sticking lumps of plasticine to the foreheads of underpaid extras. The afterword describes it as something in the tradition of Swift, although it reminds me more of Kafka's more understated sense of parody. Accordingly, it's a philosophical novel about our place in the universe, our ideas regarding God and so on, all of which is regrettably rendered far too mysterious for its own good by the translation, or so I assume. I mean it's readable and doesn't come across as necessarily garbled, and the imagery works fine, but this telling of Solaris is in all other respects on the wrong side of ponderous by a good couple of miles, which is most likely why my eyes kept skidding down to the foot of the page. I just couldn't keep them pinned to whatever the fuck was failing to happen in narrative terms.
This was sort of a relief in so much as that after [title withheld in case its editor happens to be reading] I thought maybe my reading glands were broken. Time to look for a better translation, I guess.
I've always avoided Tarkovsky, and by association, his adaptation of Solaris. I'm sure he's a cinematic genius, but I was introduced to his work as just the sort of thing you like. This is usually the kiss of death for me, almost always amounting to it being just the sort of thing I hate because the recommendation has come from an idiot who doesn't know me anything like so well as they think they do. The second occasion of my being told that Tarkovsky was just the sort of thing I like was facilitated by [name withheld in case he happens to be reading] who expressed this idea by lecturing me at length for a full twenty minutes before I was able to interrupt, pointing out that actually I had a hunch Tarkovsky's work probably wasn't my bag at all. He droned on regardless for another twenty minutes before I was again able to get a word in edgeways, this time attempting to diffuse the increasingly uncomfortable situation with levity.
'Go on,' I quipped, 'push your glasses up your nose and say, as my producer said to me…'
He spared me a stony glance then continued his monologue. I suppose it's possible that he'd never seen The Two Ronnies, just as I'd never seen Solaris.
Anyway, no-one ever described Lem's original novel as just the sort of thing I like, never mind acknowledging its existence as an early version of Tarkovsky's film taking the form of printed words describing what would eventually appear on the screen; and I gather he was pals with Philip K. Dick by some definition, so it therefore seemed to be worth a punt. Unfortunately, according to Mark Hodder, what I have here is a fairly poor translation.
Solaris presents some wonderful ideas, particularly regarding extraterrestrial life, here imagined in such a way as to reduce most other authors to hacks busily sticking lumps of plasticine to the foreheads of underpaid extras. The afterword describes it as something in the tradition of Swift, although it reminds me more of Kafka's more understated sense of parody. Accordingly, it's a philosophical novel about our place in the universe, our ideas regarding God and so on, all of which is regrettably rendered far too mysterious for its own good by the translation, or so I assume. I mean it's readable and doesn't come across as necessarily garbled, and the imagery works fine, but this telling of Solaris is in all other respects on the wrong side of ponderous by a good couple of miles, which is most likely why my eyes kept skidding down to the foot of the page. I just couldn't keep them pinned to whatever the fuck was failing to happen in narrative terms.
This was sort of a relief in so much as that after [title withheld in case its editor happens to be reading] I thought maybe my reading glands were broken. Time to look for a better translation, I guess.
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