‘Away We Go’ in Search of Literary Street Cred?

Travel Blog  •  Eva Holland  •  06.18.09 | 1:23 PM ET

Publicity still via IGN

The Book Bench takes a saucy look at “Away We Go,” the Sam Mendes-directed, Eggers/Vida-penned flick that recently got the World Hum Travel Movie Club treatment.

Writes blogger Jenna Krajeski: “Mendes ruined his reputation around the library when he suffocated Richard Yates’s masterpiece [“Revolutionary Road”] on the silver screen. Is he trying to win back his literary cred?” Or, she wonders, did the two novelists throw the game deliberately in the name of the printed page? “Perhaps there’s no better way to prove that novelists should stick to writing novels than to have two skilled fiction writers fail at writing for the movies.” Ouch.

Tags: Literature, Movies, Shameless Self-Promotion, News and Briefs

Eva Holland is co-editor of World Hum. She is a former associate editor at Up Here and Up Here Business magazines, and a contributor to Vela. She's based in Canada's Yukon territory.


1 Comment for ‘Away We Go’ in Search of Literary Street Cred?

TambourineMan 06.19.09 | 12:38 PM ET

I wasn’t a big Away We Go fan, but the “novelists should stick to writing novels” bit is silly. The newyorker.com commentor cites Graham Greene/The Third Man and Nabokov/Lolita. Off the top of my head, I’ll add Mario Puzo/Godfather, Raymond Chandler/Blue Dahlia, Double Indemnity and Strangers on a Train. Faulkner (with Howard Hawks) adapted The Big Sleep and To Have And Have Not.

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