American Literature on Stage and Screen: 525 Works and their Adaptations by Thomas S. Hischak (review)

Literary adaptation is as popular as ever. As Thomas S. Hischak demonstrates in his broad and far-reaching study American Literature on Stage and Screen, playwrights and screenwriters have turned to American literature as a source of inspiration for storytelling since the 19th century. Adaptation of popular literature ensures marketability, especially for Hollywood, by relying on successful narratives that audiences are already familiar with. A quick look at Hollywood’s releases in 2013 reveals the prevalence of adaptation: Safe Haven, adapted from a Nicholas Sparks novel of the same name; Oz: The Great and Powerful, inspired by L. Frank Baum’s Oz series; Tiger Eyes, adapted from Judy Blume’s young adult novel; World War Z, based on the 2006 novel by Max Brooks; What Maisie Knew, a modernizing of Henry James’s 1897 novel; and most famously, another adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, directed by Baz Luhrmann. Luhrmann’s film is the sixth screen adaptation of the novel. The film received a fair amount of criticism over its faithfulness to the original source material but it was undoubtedly a box office success.

Faithfulness to original source material is a major theoretical underpinning of adaptation studies, and Hischak makes faithfulness the focus of his analysis. Hischak selected 525 works of American fiction (limiting his study to novels and short stories) that have been adapted for the stage, film, or television. Hischak selected the titles under consideration based on pieces of literature that he considers the most “influential,” but he is quick to point out that the list is “arbitrary and highly subjective.” For each work under consideration Hischak provides lists of the adapted titles for stage and screen, the medium the work was adapted for, the studio or location for the adapted work, the writer who adapted the work, the director of the work, and the cast involved in the production. The bulk of the book is made up of Hischak’s extended commentary about the strength of each adaptation. The book has value as a reference book but offers much more than pure information. Hischak’s commentary quickly reveals the depth of his passion and knowledge on the topic. As an author he couldn’t be better qualified to write about this subject, having published over 20 books on related subjects, most of them encyclopedias covering vast subject matter such as adaptations of stage plays to the screen, the American musical, and film scoring. In his analysis of the success of adaptations Hischak emphasizes perspective and point of view, arguing that point of view “is the bridge that links fiction with its adaptations.”

Although the book doesn’t specifically address American naturalism, the adaptations of works by naturalist authors make up a significant portion of Hischak’s selected works. Hischak provides extended commentary on Jack London’s novels The Call of the Wild, The Sea Wolf, and White Fang. Hischak’s commentary on The Sea Wolf is the most detailed and focuses on the strength and weaknesses of the nine film and television adaptations of the novel. The commentary provides a rough sketch of the adaptations but doesn’t get into very much depth, given the format of the book. Frank Norris’s and Theodore Dreiser’s work appears briefly. The commentary on An American Tragedy is of interest to Dreiser scholars since it focuses on Dreiser’s opposition to the 1931 film version of the book and discusses director Josef von Sternberg’s conflict with Dreiser over the final cut of the film. Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening is mentioned, but the commentary on it is very slight.

Hischak’s devotes five entries to Edith Wharton’s work, analyzing The Age of Innocence, The Buccaneers, Ethan Frome, The House of Mirth, and The Old Maid. Hischak lives up to his promise of focusing on faithfulness in his commentary on Wharton’s work, as...