Round 1
by James Norton

Once upon a time, I used to live inside of books. Not literally, although they are the most physically comfortable medium — they're great insulators and burnable for warmth. Anyone's who has ever tried to torch a stack of DVDs can attest to the old-timey utility of paper and ink.

More metaphorically, though. A good book is a refuge. It's a self-contained universe, with more length, depth and sheer power than any other form of media, by dint of the massive chunks of time it commands, and the levels of nuance it can thoroughly explore.

Time was, books like "Catch-22," "All the King's Men" and "From Here to Eternity" consumed and occupied me. I reviewed books and interviewed authors whenever I had the chance. I sat down face-to-face with Kurt Vonnegut, and asked him what a 23-year-old kid who hoped to write books with real impact should do. He said: "Forget impact. Forget money, forget fame. Just write. Let it come out of you organically."

That was fulfilling.

As college ended, however, I became increasingly aware of America's emerging writers. Deeply smug, intimidatingly erudite and colossally self-involved, these new authors lived very much inside their own labrythine and mostly East Coast-based heads. But unlike their ancestors — writers like Jorge Luis Borges, Kurt Vonnegut and Thomas Pynchon — the new postmodern wave seemed to have all the kinks, crinkles and self-referential twists with very little of the philosopical and historical backbone that made their predecessors so hypnotic.

In short: New books seem to be less about conveying mind-altering ideas than presenting splashy autobiographies.

At the same time, cinema was coming alive. Pulp Fiction was released, hitting the scene like the first drop of rain before a storm of great movies. Wes Anderson and the Coen Bros. became increasingly productive, throwing knockout punch after knockout punch. Their output — extremely funny, visually gorgeous, and as sharply written as anything anywhere — started to become my lodestone. Books faded away.

At the same time, foreign films truly became part of my world. The initial twist of the first Dogme film, Celebration, stabbed as deeply into my heart as Judge Irwin's death in "All the King's Men." And being in a theater with hundreds of other people — gasping and whispering to one another in the aftermath of a shocking scene — was nothing like the solitary pleasure of reading. It was smart like a good book, sure. It was emotionally fulfilling like reading, yes. But it was also social, something shared with friends and strangers. The explosion of titles in the bookstore — combined with the decline of book clubs — has made it harder to connect with fellow fiction readers.

Now, when I want to gain a bit of perspective, I increasingly head to the movie theater or fire up Barton Fink or Rushmore instead of cracking the spine of a new underground literary sensation. The most-hyped new authors, it seems, want to talk about themselves to a cadre of fans more interested in displays of cool intellect than the broad human experience or genuinely clever explorations of the world's many systems.

The best new directors and screenwriters also tell cracklingly smart and engaging stories. With the repeated viewing of such films as The Big Lebowski and The Royal Tenenbaums, plus the deeper exploration of classics like The Night of the Iguana, Twelve Angry Men and Battle of Algiers, the language of cinema has become increasingly clear to me. I've started picking up on parallels and symbols missed before. I've became increasingly amazed at how much information — and how many subtle jokes and thematic winks — can be packed into a single scene.

Seeing Fredo Corleone flopping helplessly in a lawn chair as his own brother extracts information from him — and then cuts him out of the family — is worth 10,000 words.

It is, of course, a gross exaggeration to say there aren't great, genuinely exciting books still being written and published. Anyone who has read Steven Millhauser's "Martin Dressler" or Haruki Murakami's "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" would be hard pressed to say that most expansive spirit of literature has completely faded, and books like "Empire Falls" and "The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" have won kudos from nearly everyone I know who's read them.

That said, however, the last piece of art I truly dove into was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, by Michel Gondry, a French music video director so talented that he eclipses Spike "'Sabotage' and 'Weapon of Choice'" Jonze. And as for books ... well, Robert Caro will be churning out another 1,200 pages on Lyndon Johnson sometime soon, right?

I'll be there. But in the meantime, my heart will belong to Hollywood, Bollywood and Cannes. The good stuff appears to have taken wing from the page, migrated and landed on the big screen.

— James Norton (jim@flakmag.com)

More:
Round 2 by Joshua Adams
Round 3 by Louis Cooke
Round 4 by Stephen Himes

— graphic by Derek Evernden (derek@ocellus.net)