You Can't Judge a Book

... by looking at the cover (unless, to quote Johnny Rotten, "you cover just another") or by comparing it to its film adaptation. Because Holly Go-Heavily has plenty of spare time right now (and P-Cat knows the reason why), I decided to read Robert Bloch's novel Psycho (1959). This is one of those rare instances where the film (1960; dir. Alfred Hitchcock) is superior to the book it adapts. Bloch is a straight-up hack with no knack for suspense, pacing or character depth. There are plenty of key differences between the novel and film. Since more people are familiar with the movie, I'll talk about how the book differs. Norman Bates is a forty year-old virgin who wears glasses, is a Texan (or Oklahoman), and an overweight alcoholic who dabbles in the occult. His interest in taxidermy is only mentioned once: he stuffs a squirrel. Norman Bates and Mary Crane are, basically, both driven to madness (in admittedly vast and varying forms) because they want to get laid, but social forces are working to prevent this from happening. I could go on and on (which I won't) about the subtle changes Hitchcock's screenwriter Joseph Stefano made when he adapted Bloch's novel to improve upon the original, but I will refrain here. The point of this long-winded exercise in bloggorrhea is that yes, indeed, there are some novels/books with film doppelgangers that are much better (this, of course, excludes novelizations of films), though not many. Here are some that come to mind:

++ Henry Fielding's The History of Tom Jones (1749) --> Tom Jones (1963; dir. Tony Richardson)
++ L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1899) --> The Wizard of Oz (1939; dir. Victor Fleming)
++ Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick's 2001: a Space Odyssey (1968) --> 2001: a Space Odyssey (1968; dir. Stanley Kubrick)

Actually, these are all I could think of. Now, to be honest, I've not read Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca (1938), James Jones' The Thin Red Line (1962), Mario Puzo's The Godfather (1969), Stephen King's The Shining (1977), Paddy Chayefsky's Altered States (1978), Nicholas Pileggi's Wiseguy (1985, which was adapted as GoodFellas), Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho (1990) or Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club (1996), which seem like they'd be better as films, but I could be totally wrong on this.

Can you think of any, Paper Cat? Anybody else out there?