Book It! 2008 - Shutter Island

I can admit that I'm cheating a bit. By reading books that are in the process of being adapted into feature films, ones being made by highly-respected filmmakers, I'm sparing myself the experiences of reading shitty prose and sticking to quality lit. If a book is being turned into a movie, then odds are its a pretty good read, right? Safe to assume, no? Seems so to muah.

So thus far, in my newly-ignited penchant for readin a good book, I've breezed through a pair of great novels: Cormac McCarthy's The Road, and Jose Saramago's Blindness. And I've had basically nothing but praise for both, and very rightfully so. And in my recapping here about Blindness, I hailed it as the best book I've ever read, or something along those lauded lines. And at that point, it damn sure was.

But such an honor has been dethroned faster than the New York Yankees atop MLB's dominant-chair (sorry to all my die-hard Yanks fans/friends....I just can't avoid a good and factual play-on-words). Enter Dennis Lehane's mind-blowing, page-turning, head-scratching, and for yours truly, infinitely-inspirational work, Shutter Island.



Lehane, a Boston-area native, is no stranger to having his books become movies---both his Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone were turned into stellar flicks, by Clint Eastwood and Ben Affleck, respectively.

But the pedigree involved in the movie version of Shutter Island, scheduled for October of 2009 release, was more than enough to get me intrigued.....

Director = Martin Scorcese
Actors = Leonardo Dicaprio, Sir Ben Kingsley, Emily Mortimer (who was great in the slept-on Transsiberian), and Mark Ruffalo (who is quickly becoming one of my fave actors)

And then I found out that Shutter Island has a mysterious, gothic, seriously-macabre tone to it, and my geekdom went into overdrive. Think about that.....Scorcese directing an eerie, unsettling, gothic psychological thriller? That's fucking sweet music to my macabre-loving ears! [I kinda hope they dont change the film version's title to the rumored Ashecliffe, though; Shutter Island just sounds much stronger to me. And besides, that's the original's name, for crying out loud!]

But man, oh man. Marty S. has his hands full, my friends, because Lehane's Shutter Island is absolutely brilliant. Seriously. It's certainly a book tailor-made for a talented filmmaker to transform into a live-action creation, but by-God Scorcese better stick to his source material as closely as possible here. This book is the tits, man! I only put it down maybe four times, and those were either due to need-for-sleep or my PATH train stop had arrived, unfortunately. I'd MUCH rather have stayed within Shutter Island's vice-grip than be at work, but that's not neither here nor there.

I'm not going to get into any real specifics about the story itself here, because truthfully, I really want those around me go pick it up, like right now, and immerse themselves in it, so I have somebody to talk about it with. I'm sitting here pissed off as I type that I can't engage in a thoughtful chit-chat about the insanity and density that I just read. I honestly may not even get a good night's sleep tonight; the story is still unraveling and festering within my thoughts. I can't stop mulling over it.

I will, though, give a very-brief synopsis, just to entice those reading this....the calendar reads 1954, and U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels is sent on assignment to Ashecliffe Hospital, a home for the criminally-insanse-and-dangerous located on the remote Shutter Island, which is near Boston. He's assigned to go there with a partner he's never met before, Chuck Aule, and together they're supposed to locate a missing patient, a woman named Rachel Solando, who killed her three children and is batshit crazy. But as the two Marshals begin noticing how no person in Ashecliffe--including the wardens and the medical staff, led by Dr. John Cawley---seems to give a shit about the Solando disappearance, a freak hurricane hits, making any hopeful departure off the isle impossible, and strongly fatal. And this is where shit really gets heavy, with patients riots, mysterious surgeries, and tons more. TONS. MORE.

Suffice it to say, the story goes in places that I never imagined it would, directions I couldn't believe were being taken. Lehane's command of dialogue and character development, and just his handling of prose in general, is so superior, its a bit scary. I'm most certainly going back to read his entire book-ography now, surely on my to-do list. He's a writer that inspires aspiring scribes such as myself.

Reading Shutter Island could very well be a serious life-defining moment for me, just like seeing the film Grindhouse on opening day was for me last year. Both experiences are similar in that---and not to trivialize what I used to be so focused on or what any of my associates still do in any way; this is just my personal stance on the matter---they've each woken me up, to just how lame hip-hop writing really can be. For a lad like me, at least. I'll save my deep thoughts on this stance for a future posting, but I really challenge anybody to read a book like Shutter Island and try to make a case for ANY MODERN-DAY RAP ALBUM in terms of being more substantial or worth my time in a greater sense. And yes, this means Lupe Fiasco albums, or Nas albums. And don't get it twisted--I love both dudes' music. But there's no contest here, man.

Writing about lames like Flo Rida and Lil Boosie is a joke, really. What value will they have ten years from now? Fuck it---three years from now? I'm just saying, from here on out I'm focusing on covering things that really register with my heart and my brain, things that I can look back upon years from now and be proud that I shared a piece of it at one point in time. Things like a cinema-going experience such as the one I had while seeing Grindhouse. Speaking to those involved with it, picking their brains and delving into a genuine piece of singular, untainted, blood-and-sweat-soaked vision. Things like the novel Shutter Island, a stunning piece of art that can be digested numerous times, and most likely won't ever lose its impact.

Shutter Island makes me want to become a better writer. Makes me want to command my prose even half as well as Dennis Lehane. Makes me want to joggle my brain for narrative ideas and concepts, because I know I have a plethora of them buried in my head, I just need to shake them out a bit.

Makes me want to nurture and capitalize upon the talent I know I possess, a talent that I truly feel hasn't even scratched the surface. Not even one fingernail-ful of dirt.

Shutter Island is the exact kind of story I hope to one day tell and write: a superior work of fiction that consistently entertains, takes it time with exposition and character nurturing, grips the reader in a vice of tension and suspense, and then totally pulls the rug from under their reading-feet and sends their minds to a place where confusion and spine-tingles co-exist.

The Scorcese adaptation has just catapulted to the Number One Spot on my "2009 Most Anticipated Films" list, leap-frogging over The Wolfman and Watchmen.

Here is the writer who could have very well (only time will tell, for sure) changed my life (may sound a bit dramatic, but I'm so-sinsur), Dennis Lehane:



**And here's a couple of on-set images from the Scorcese flick....DiCaprio plays "Teddy Daniels," while Michelle Williams (yes, Heath Ledger's late baby mama, who just happens to be a pretty damn fine actress in her own right) plays Daniels' late wife, "Dolores"