The entry begins:In some ways this book was inspired by the 1998 movie Sliding Doors, which showed two versions of the same life going down diverging paths, depending on whether or not the leading character catches a particular train. It’s a sharp reminder of how easily someone’s life can veer off in a different direction, and how many possible lives we all carry around inside us – the rival selves that repeatedly get aborted by choice or chance. Dickens was obsessed by the idea, and often reminded his friends that he could have ended up as an actor or a beggar just as easily as a writer. I’d love to see a movie version of Becoming Dickens that dramatised this idea, by having dozens of different versions of Dickens wandering around, like a Victorian sequel to Todd Haynes’s 2007 Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There. That way I wouldn’t have to choose between the actors who could play Dickens. Dan...[read on]Read more about Becoming Dickens at the publisher's website.
My Book, The Movie: Becoming Dickens.
--Marshal Zeringue
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