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On Amazon.com, 8 out of 211 people criticized Blatty's writing style negatively. They complained that the book reads too much like a screenplay.
Here's a bit of the most recent review on there:
“The problem is the lazy execution. There are literally paragraphs where Blatty writes things like:
Waking. Drool down cheek. Eyes crusted over. So tired. Regan!
Blattly seems to be writing a screen play. Transitions are so quick that one sentence you might be in a doctor's office and the next in Regan's bedroom. All of the atmosphere dissipates as a result, and all horror books require atmosphere. In fact atmosphere is rarely ever built. Sad because this could have been a good novel.”
So, how many people here agree with this? And if you were able to rewrite the novel how much would your writing style differ from Blatty's? What is the best writing style to create tension?
I asked this all to fatherb in an email, and his answer was that Blatty's writing style creates not only the tension in the prose, but the tension in his ideology of horror and suspense.
🙂
I've read that novel at least a dozen times and it never once read like a screenplay to me.
However it must be remembered that Blatty was a very successful screenwriter, it's how he made his living so his prose is bound to reflect that.
There is nothing lazy about the execution, it was a best selling, incredibly powerful novel with bags of atmosphere. the first time I read it I could not put it down until it was over.
For someone to claim the book has no atmosphere is quite honestly dumbfounding.
Sounds to me like desperate amateur reviewers doing their level best to appear smart by overstating the obvious and looking for faults that are not there. But is amazon and that's pretty much the level of criticism you'd expect to find there.
For truly daft, outlandish and generally sub-normal opinions and theories I always enjoy the IMDB message boards. They get me shouting at the monitor in no time 😉
Thanks, Jagged,
but if you could change anything about the novel, what would it be? I wish it was longer, with 500 + pages.
Also, my portuguese translation of the novel differs a bit from the original English version. Sentences like, “The house was quiet” was translated to, “the house was immersed in the silence.” so on…I enjoy Blatty's style. The Exorcist has been built up so much for people who haven't experienced it yet, some go it with expectations set too high.
Yeah, those remarks are bull. They're sad little people who know Blatty wrote the screenplay, so have tried to criticise the novel as being too like a screenplay.
If anything, given Friedkin's ditching of Blatty's quite different original screenplay and closer adherence to the novel, the movie is actually more episodic and 'book-ish' than the book screenplay-like.
Silly remarks by people trying to be clever!
Sofia said:
Thanks, Jagged,
but if you could change anything about the novel, what would it be? I wish it was longer, with 500 + pages.
Also, my portuguese translation of the novel differs a bit from the original English version. Sentences like, “The house was quiet” was translated to, “the house was immersed in the silence.” so on…
I guess I would have to agree. There is little I would willingly change, but if it could be longer I wouldn't complain. Some more Demon conversations would be welcome, a little back story on the Demon would also be nice although it would risk ripping some of the mystery from the story.
It's a very hard question to answer, how to change something you love so much.
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