Blog #7, Reaction to Debates

    I will first start off with the discussion seen between Jonathan Franzen and SL. The first topic they discuss is the matter of adults reading YA, (Young Adult). While we see Ruth Graham slamming the adults who read and recommend YA, Franzen is seen saying that he couldn't care what people read and while some people read it for the encouraging, uplifting messages in that genre that is not seen in the others. Which surprised the interviewer.
   My take on YA is one similar to Franzen's. I do not care what other people read as long as it doesn't affect me. As long as I can be left to myself with what genres I read and to what I do with that I am as happy as I'll ever be. However, once others start to force these "great pieces of literature" onto me, I become slightly irate and annoyed at the consistency and perseverance to get me to read those books. YA might not be my favorite genre but I certainly won't trash on it.
   Another topic brought up in this discussion is women in literature. The main part of this topic was how women are given less press time than men, and following this SL asks Franzen about what he thinks of Jennifer Weiner. Now as I have never heard of this writer I assumed she might be a new upcoming writer or one of books I don't read. But as it turns out with a little research, shes been writing for quite a while. SL goes on to ask about her being the head of this organization leading the charge to equal representation for women in the writing field, but Franzen doesn't quite like this "leader". What Franzen tells us about Weiner is that she uses this organization and attention to get more readers to herself, while being the only one to benefit and not the other women who she is supposedly representing. He also says that he has never read any of her books because he has heard of no one ever recommending them.
   While that last thing is quite confusing, there is some truth to it. The leader of the association is one of little merit and apparently has little to offer the literary world. If infact, she does use VIDA to just purely benefit herself, it would show one way that she cares little for furthering the literary world. However, as I know little about this organization and what they do, I can't say much, but I can say that I do not believe women are misrepresented in the media or press.    

       

The Firm, Book vs Film

    Oh, my, god. Talk about two entirely different stories. But before reading this I must let you know there will be spoilers, and lots of them. As I will discuss most of the differences between the book and the movie from beginning to end.
    One of the first differences we notice is how quickly the first 100 pages of the book go by in the movie. His struggles and troubled upbringing that is described in so much detail is never seen as it starts with the scene of a basketball game which is immediately followed by his interview for his firms. But as this is a movie with a limited amount of time I can see why this change had to be made. During the beginning of the movie you also aren't truly shown the poor apartment that they live in as there was no background to this either. And before you know it they are off to Memphis in a Mercedes-Benz, not a BMW.
    The next major difference we are shown is his confession to having sex with a woman in the Cayman Islands. In the movie he is threatened by Oliver Lambert and to make sure the FBI and the firm have nothing over his head he tells Abby. As you can guess, this causes quite a-bit of distrust and anger between the two as she takes the stance of no longer trusting or wanting to be with Mitch (Tom Cruise). In the book, he never tells Abby as he doesn't want to cause this distrust and there is a scare when an envelope is sent to his house containing nothing.
   Now for probably the biggest difference between the two, is the reasoning behind framing the firm. In the book its by breaking the attorney client pact that no attorney can break without ever wanting to be hired again. He does this by printing all the illegal business' earnings and showing all the other illegal operations happening throughout the Firm. In the book, we figures out that the firm is over billing all the businesses connected to firm, allowing a higher salary to be paid to everyone working. A scheme that doesn't break the attorney client pact so Mitch is able to continue working as a lawyer.    The last difference we see is where the two different Mitch's end up. In the book he ends up in the Caribbean with his wife and Ray and Abanks. In the movie ray is off with the secretary and Abanks and Abby is living with Mitch who is looking for a job.
    Overall the movie was amazing and can't be compared to severely to the book as it took two entirely different angles. I would highly recommend both the movie and the book as it will be thoroughly remembered by myself.