Literary Text, Cinematic "Edition": Adaptation, Textual Authority, and the Filming of Tropic of Cancer

While many viewers feel betrayed by screen adaptations of novels, one might account for generic differences by considering the lessons of contemporary textual scholarship. Anti-intentionalist approaches to textuality, which emphasize a text's socially negotiated nature, may offer viewers a way to consider adaptations as "editions" of their source novels. In applying textual theories to the 1970 film of Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, one may argue that the decisions made by director Joseph Strick mirror those of other textual editors. Strick's choices, while inevitably unsatisfactory to many viewers, represent a concerted effort not to "betray" Miller's novel but to solve textual problems peculiar to film and to present a viable "reading text" to the public.