Plays and movies

It took me a while to get into The Castle by Kafka. It can definitely be a boring book, but it doesn’t have to be. What finally got me into the book was this: I stopped imagining the scenery of the story as if it were a movie or a television show: an entire world playing out in front of a camera. Instead, I now imagine it as a theatrical production, as if I’m watching a play of The Castle, with a limited set and props, actors in the background doing whatever, the spotlight following the current thread of the narrative. Imagining K.’s world in this way helps me understand the story being told, I guess because The Castle is a “theatrical” novel?

I recently read The Name of the Wind, a modern fantasy novel which was very much written like a movie, and not like a play. It was easier to imagine Kvothe’s world as a series of movie scenes, with the camera focusing on different things for effect, cut scenes to explain a back story, and so on.

Maybe I’m becoming a better reader? Maybe I have an over-active imagination?