“Trying to Talk about Paradox, or the Existence of That Which Does Not Exist”: The Transposition of The Blood Oranges from John Hawkes's 1972 Novel to Philip Haas's 1997 Film

Abstract

A comparison of key features of John Hawkes's novel, The Blood Oranges (1972), with Philip Haas's film (1997) demonstrates the film to be constructed artfully and with meaningful attention to the Hawkes novel. An examination of the treatment of representative stylistic details and scenes in each, however, reveals in the Hawkes novel a fertile landscape for subtlety and interpretive richness, expressed in a wide range of tones—from comic irony to obsession to paradox. The Haas film, in contrast, represents a more limited interpretational manner: a product of specific (but delimiting) interpretive choices that diminish the profundity of the Hawkes text.