Stanley Kubrick, the relentless perfectionist who directed some of cinema’s greatest classics, was so sensitive to criticism that, in 1970, he threatened legal action to block publication of a book which dared to discuss flaws in his films.
The director of Spartacus and 2001: A Space Odyssey, warned the book’s author and publisher that he would fight “tooth and nail” and “use every legal means at his disposal” to prevent its publication – and he did.
Now, 25 years after his death, the book Kubrick did not want anyone to read is being published, more than half a century late.
The Magic Eye: The Cinema of Stanley Kubrick by Neil Hornick now has three prefaces reflecting its subject’s ruthlessness in trying to block publication and control his image.
Hornick, now 84, from London, said Kubrick’s legal threats had come as a shock: “I regard it as a painful episode.”
And his work is shit. I have no idea why so many adults think that young adult level writing and storytelling is the work of a master.
Yeah I thought Enders Game was the best book ever when I read it in like 4th or 5th grade. I read through the whole series of books over the next few years and enjoyed them at the time. I went back to read Enders Game as an adult and realized I just really enjoyed the wish fulfillment in reading about a bullied kid smashing the bullies face in then running shit. You’re right, it’s a pretty basic book and I have no idea why any adult would hold it or Card up as anything but basic. The only good thing I have to say about it as an adult is that it helped ignite my love of science fiction.
Tbf the first books of misunderstood child prodigy messiah in a sci fi setting were pretty good. The lack of much deviation for everything following sucked. Then there’s his politics…
Enders game is pretty simplistic outcast juvenile wish fulfillment. If you read it as a kid I am sure it seemed more than space Harry potter but meh. I don’t know how it could be more pandering without a committee of child psychologists helping write it.
i don’t particularly recall that it was intended for young adults at the time. it was just genre fiction.
Card’s short story collection, Unaccompanied Sonata, is great.