[As the leaf-peeping begins in earnest (seriously, that’s a thing we do here in New England), a series on some iconic American images of the loss of
innocence that we so often associate with autumn. Add your thoughts on falls,
seasonal or symbolic, in comments!]
On the novella that’s explicitly about the “fall from innocence,” and the
film adaptation that’s less so.
In 1982, frustrated by his inability to publish works that weren’t part of
the horror genre in which he had risen to fame, Steven King decided to release
four such novellas as one collection, Different Seasons, with each novella linked to one of the four seasons. The
most famous, thanks to its cult classic film adaptation, is almost certainly the
collection’s first piece, Rita Hayworth and
the Shawshank Redemption (seasonal
subtitle: Hope Springs Eternal). But
nearly as well-known, thanks in large measure to its own popular film
adaptation Stand By Me (1986), is the collection’s third piece, The Body (seasonal subtitle: Fall
from Innocence). (The collection’s summer novella, Apt Pupil: Summer
of Corruption, has also been made into
a recent film, and is, in its
portrayal of a teenage boy corrupted by a former Nazi war criminal, a candidate
for this week’s series in its own right.)
On the surface, The Body and Stand By Me are almost identical: in
each forty-something novelist Gordie Lachance narrates the story of a teenage
adventure with his three best friends, a trip that the four boys take after
hearing about a dead body out in the woods near their hometown. Moreover, each
ends with (among other things) Gordie informing the audience that his best best
friend, Chris Chambers, worked his way out of a poor and violent upbringing to reach
college and law school, only to die in a random and tragic stabbing, a detail
that certainly symbolizes the loss of childhood innocence as the protagonists
move into the often brutal and cold adult world. Yet the change in title from
the novella to the film illustrates a broader thematic shift: Rob Reiner’s
movie is far more centrally concerned with the camaraderie and joys of teenage
friendship (its last line is “I never had any friends like the ones I had when
I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?”, which appears in the middle of King’s book
and is thus emphasized far more in the film); while King’s novella depicts the
world’s brutalities much more consistently, including a savage beating that all
four boys receive at the hands of an older brother and his friends.
Which is to say, at the risk of oversimplifying the two works, Reiner’s
film is ultimately pretty nostalgic about the world of childhood, while King’s novella complicates and to my mind
ultimately rejects that kind of nostalgia. Concurrently, the two could be read
as depicting the loss of innocence in very different ways: Reiner’s film
portraying it as a moment of genuine shift, from one kind of life and world to
another; and King’s as more of a realization about the darkness of the world we
have always inhabited, even as young people. I think there’s a place in our
narratives and images for both stories, and that they complement each other
nicely; but I also think that King’s story is a bit truer to the world of young
adulthood, which while certainly free of various adult responsibilities and
pressures can still be (as the Knowles and Cormier books from Monday’s post
illustrate) as fraught and perilous as the darkest realities of adult life.
Next fall tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you think? Images of fall, or The Fall, you’d share?
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