Silver Linings Playbook is a Novel?!?!

I'll start out by saying that I have not seen the movie yet, even though every other self-respecting hipster has.  I think, this time, I outhipstered everyone by not watching the movie until I read the book.  That's right, it's a book.  I think SLP probably falls into the same category as The Notebook, Drive, Shutter Island, The Prestige, or any other book-based movie carried by charismatic leads.  (Yes, I am huge Ryan Gosling fan.  Lars and the Real Girl, anyone?)  Sure, the premise is interesting enough--but not wholly original--and Pat has a lot of shit going on because he's mentally unstable, but none of these elements pull together to make it any more complex or deep.  Matthew Quick managed to write a whole novel about a sensitive, agonizing issue without ever delving past "I feel like hitting my head" and "Ahhhhhhhh!"

In a way, I think he should be commended for it; having been close to people that have gone through similar experiences, the repetitive and simple way Pat expresses his frustration is really true to life.  I still didn't like it, though.  This is literature, and Quick's decision to warp reality by having Pat miraculously run into his friend, Danny, from the "bad place" while not polishing up the apparent lack of self reflection in the protagonist is not a choice I would have made as a writer.  My guess is that Pat comes off better in the movie adpatation; maybe he doesn't considering Bradley Cooper didn't get an Oscar.  It was probably that stupid Eagles chant that ruined it for him.

My real beef with SLP is with the last few chapters of the book, mainly when Katniss Tiffany writes a letter to Pat about her husband's death.  My first issue is that I'm pretty sure that if I had a husband that wanted to have nonstop sex to the point where I couldn't watch T.V., I would bring up that he needs to chill way sooner than ten years.  Really, Quick?  You couldn't come up with anything else to be a source of guilt for Tiffany?  Second, after implying that Tiffany lost her job because she did terrible things throughout the novel, it was kind of a WTF moment when I realized the terrible thing was that she had tons of grief sex.  I think Black Swan upped the ante for dance-fueled drama, because I had been imagining way sicker things than promiscuity.

I have to warn you, I am about to get a little feminist right now.  If you are one of those people that hates women with opinions, scroll down to the next paragraph.  The backstory for Tiffany is what really cemented my opinion that Matthew Quick won't ever be classic and I won't read any of his other books in the future.  It was so painfully obvious that a man wrote this, and he couldn't even distance himself enough from his masculine-fueled, sport-crazed perspective to write realistic female characters.  Pat's mom is too selfless, Nikki wouldn't have thought Veronica was a bitch, and I think Tiffany being a sex addict (for whateve reason) is weird.  As a woman, I did not conenct with any of the female characters whatsoever.  There are tons of great male writers that are fully capable of creating dynamic, believable female characters (Jeffrey Eugenides, Arthur Golden) while still writing a story with strong male characters.

Now that it has been a couple of days since I finished the book, I definitely am going to go see the film just to find out if the producers were able to succeed where the novel writer faltered.  If you watched the movie and didn't read the book, I wouldn't sink into a fathomless pit of regret over it.  You should only feel like that if you didn't read Harry Potter before the movies.