Literary novelizations?
You're all well-read people. Can you think of any examples of what one might call "literary novelization"? I've been reading a lot of adaptation theory and it's often mentioned that novelization - the writing of a book based on a film - gets little scholarly attention. Since intellectual types tend to say "the book is better," this is interesting, given its apparent implication that once something's been done in movie form it's really been done and cannot be embellished by a transfer to prose.
However, novelizations are generally quickly-written, commercial tie-in products, works of less creativity than the Lego sets accompanying a new blockbuster. Surely if a talented writer took time over one, a novelization could have true literary merit? And if it can be done, my question becomes, has it been done?
The only possibility I can think of is Parts: The Clonus Horror as a forerunner to Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go (which of course then was adapted as a film itself), but there probably isn't enough correlation between movie and book to call it more than an adaptation of a culturally saturated idea.
However, novelizations are generally quickly-written, commercial tie-in products, works of less creativity than the Lego sets accompanying a new blockbuster. Surely if a talented writer took time over one, a novelization could have true literary merit? And if it can be done, my question becomes, has it been done?
The only possibility I can think of is Parts: The Clonus Horror as a forerunner to Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go (which of course then was adapted as a film itself), but there probably isn't enough correlation between movie and book to call it more than an adaptation of a culturally saturated idea.