By Jonathan Price
Why does anyone want to do yet another film version of one of the great American novels of the twentieth century? The answer, I suppose, is the same as why anyone tries to climb mountains: because they are there. Actually, despite the relatively small fatality rate, there is far more repeat success climbing mountains than there is any significant success turning great literature into even moderately successful or satisfying films. In fact, the effort is littered with the near-dead bodies of failed attempts at great fiction-to-film transformations.
