Interesting article in this Sunday’s New York Times Book Review on how Hollywood is affecting novels.

Some worry that movies and the desire to have your book made into a movie negatively influences the writing, but Diane Johnson said screenwriting has helped her sense of structure.

And Tom Perrotta said, “Writing screenplays has the paradoxical effect of making me a more literary writer, much more conscious of what I can do in a novel that I can’t do in a script: the ease of a flashback within a flashback, how you can have immediate access to any event in your character’s life.”

A movie just came out about a novelist that I want to see: Starting Out in the Evening.

But movies made from books: Accidental Tourist worked well. I can’t say I finished The English Patient, but I’m thinking the movie worked better than the book (don’t hit me, all you readers who loved the book; I loved the writing, but I just wasn’t compelled to finish). I liked Wonder Boys very much. I didn’t like Perrotta’s Little Children as a film, though I loved it as a book. What other movies translated well–or didn’t?