Dallas: Part Trois
I’m already thinking about the cast. Who should play Dallas? Obviously, if the previous two books had already been adapted into screenplays and had gone through production, we would just use the same actor. What happens, though, if this book gets optioned for a movie on its own—without the other two? Would that work? I suppose. You would just have to fill in some of the backstory as necessary. Anyway, whichever actor plays Dallas, he would have to be able to pass for being both a 28-year-old and a 40-year-old. The good news is that the prospective screenplay has already anticipated that problem. People keep telling Dallas that he never seems to age.
If you’re confused, then welcome to my world. No, obviously what I’m talking about is my new novel. Yes, there’s another one. It’s book number five, but who’s counting? Actually, I am. I’m counting. I’m counting them on my fingers over and over and over. I am totally amazed that I have now finished—or at least stopped writing—five novels. And if I’m amazed, just think how my friends, acquaintances and relatives must feel. I spent the first 18—yes, 18—years of the existence of this blog lamenting the fact that I had never written the novel I had always wanted and was meant to. Then in an amazing turn-around, I spent the next seven years writing not one, not two, not three, not four but five novels. How miraculous is that? Pretty darn miraculous, I’d say.
Searching for Cunégonde was officially released yesterday.
What? You’re only finding out now? That’s what you get for not following my book blog or for not reading any of my social media posts, links for which are handily included somewhere over on the left edge of this web page. That’s okay. I forgive you. It’s hard to keep up with everything. So let’s get you up to speed.
This is the third book to chronicle the adventures and contretemps of one Dallas Green who was, like me, born in the middle of the 20th century in the farmlands of the southern San Joaquin Valley. Though I generally resist the idea, I suppose you could say he’s my literary alter ego in the same way that Nick Adams was for Ernest Hemingway or Henry Chinaski was for Charles Bukowski or Kilgore Trout was for Kurt Vonnegut or Nathan Zuckerman was for Philip Roth. See what I did there? I just associated myself in your mind with a whole lot of writers who are a lot better than I am, thereby planting the subliminal idea that I’m in their league and you should read my stuff. It’s called marketing.
The problem, though, with conceding that Dallas may be my alter ego is that is that people will tend to assume the book is a thinly veiled autobiography—as if they don’t already. Frankly, making Dallas nearly my exact age was more of a cheat so it would be easy for me to remember how old he was supposed to be in any given year.
Anyway, if Maximilian and Carlotta Are Dead was meant to be a young indy filmmaker’s first low-budget project filming with young, unknown actors on location in the Mojave Desert and if Lautaro’s Spear should have been destined to be adapted as a slightly more ambitious film with location shoots in a few different countries, well, then Searching for Cunégonde is more of an international adventure/romantic epic spanning a decade. The action switches back and forth between the dawn of the 1980s and the early 1990s. Geographically, we jump around from Ireland to Chile to Argentina to California to France, Spain and Germany.
In the writing of the book, I dropped in a few details that may amuse longtime readers of this blog. For one thing, legendary reclusive filmmaker Logan MacCaul is back, and there is a shoutout to the Cannes and Deauville film festivals as well as the Cinémathèque Française in Paris. The most elusive Easter egg for blog readers, though, will be the inevitable, sly reference to Dark Shadows. I usually drop at least one of those into each book. Anyway, you will have to have some knowledge of the Irish language—and a mind as strangely perverse as my own—to spot it.
So give my book a read and see what you think. Who do you think should direct the movie version? Who should adapt the screenplay? (No extra points for suggesting that I should do it. I’m too busy thinking about the next book.) Put together a dream cast for playing the numerous characters. I’ll probably share my own ideas on that someday soon.
In the meantime…
Hey, all you filmmakers—aspiring or otherwise—who feel a huge debt of gratitude for the boost I gave your careers with insightful, influential reviews of your movie at that important critical juncture, well, you know now how you can repay me. Just get in touch. I’ll be right here, staring persistently at my email inbox.
-S.L., 30 September 2020
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