Parading on the BBC

Parade's End Coming to the BBC

 An article from The Guardian and a blurb in The Times - both from earlier this year - reveal that the screenwriter and playwright Tom Stoppard (pictured) is currently working on an adaptation of Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End to be shown on the BBC.

The Times states that Ford's quadrilogy will be split over five parts, The Guardian says it will be six.  I guess which one you believe might be down to your own political swaying.  Either way, much content will have to be cut out to fit in with the TV format.

For example, the majority of Parade's End is focalized through the eyes and minds of the characters who populate Ford's complex narrative and this is difficult to recreate on screen.  One of the consequences of Ford's approach is a fractured timeline where the narrative constantly shifts back and forth in time as the characters' contemplate the past while situated in the present events of the story.

What we may well see is a more straightforward approach - the end result becoming a social and historical period drama with events unfolding either in chronological order or with information filled in via flashbacks.

Whatever the outcome, I look forward to viewing the end results but can't help thinking that much of the complex psychological content of the novels will be lost in translation.  That said, it is good to see the First World War being given some screen time instead of being overlooked in favour of its younger (and somewhat Americanized) brother.

Hemingway on Ford Madox Ford

Ford Madox Ford in First World War uniform.  Picture obtained here.

In my previous post, I featured some comments made by Ford Madox Ford about Ernest Hemingway.  In the interest of equality, I thought it prudent to display some of Hemingway's thoughts on Ford.

The passage in question, entitled 'Ford Madox Ford and the Devil's Disciple', appears in Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, written during the last years of his life.  However the events portrayed - a chance meeting between both writers in a Paris cafe - took place in the 1920's.

As Ford takes a seat at the table and orders a drink, Hemingway writes:

I had always avoided looking at Ford when I could and I always held my breath when I was near him in a closed room, but this was the open air and the fallen leaves blew along the sidewalks from my side of the table past his, so I took a good look at him, repented, and looked across the boulevard.  The light was changed again and I had missed the change.  I took a drink to see if his coming had fouled it, but it still tasted good.

And Hemingway continues:

The afternoon had been spoiled by seeing Ford [...].  I was trying to remember what Ezra Pound had told me about Ford, that I must never be rude to him, that I must remember that he only lied when he was very tired, that he was really a good writer and that he had been through very bad domestic troubles.  I tried hard to think of these things but the heavy, wheezing, ignoble presence of Ford himself, only touching-distance away, made it difficult.  But I tried.

Talk about being brutally honest.  In my opinion, both in terms of what Hemingway says about Ford's character and what it reveals about his own personality, this autobiographical sketch, filtered through the distance of passing time (and after Ford's death), is cathartic for Hemingway in its open, confessional style.