| THE SAGA OF BEOWULF |
| ©2008 Fantasy Castle Books All Rights Reserved |
| PUBLISHERS OF HISTORICAL & FANTASY FICTION |
NOTE: The following was intended as an appendix to the published novel, but given
space and budget constraints (and very likely a limited interest among the readership)
was relegated to the publisher’s web page.
Adapting a classic work of literature into a modern idiom is rarely a simple process, and less so
when that work is a fifteen hundred year old poem over which scholars argue to this day and
students groan at midterm. My reasons for doing so are as vague today as they likely were ten
years ago when first I undertook this project, ostensibly to bring an obscure but captivating tale to a
modern audience.
Back then I was an aspiring student of English literature, destined, in all likelihood, to graduate from
the prodigious ranks of the groaning pupil to the only slightly more prestigious order of academia,
doomed to inflict the terrors of Beowulf upon an endless procession of would-be accountants and
auto mechanics (no offense to either profession: I rely equally on both).
And yet, that which had for so long been a curse to so many was for me nothing short of a
revelation. I devoured Beowulf. I relished it. I studied the ancient Anglo-Saxon in which is was
written that I might read it in its original language. I blew off other courses of less interest in order
that I might stay another hour in the library, pouring over the seemingly endless critiques and
analyses of its interweaving structure and cryptic themes, all the while compiling my own line-by-
line translation that I might better comprehend the subtle shadings of its language.
But all for what?, I had to ask – at some point between gaining an A+ in Honors Medieval
Literature and a D in the tedious honors colloquium History of The Crusades (my one and only
D, achieved, I might add, due to my failure to appear for the final exam). What does one do with
an excess of useless facts other than teach it to others that they might do the same? The world did
not need yet another verse translation to weigh down the shelves of college libraries and the desks
of the uninterested. For me the story lived, it inhabited the very air I breathed, and yet to the
average reader it lay as dead on the page as the author who first wrote it: an epic struggle to
understand, a saga of Herculean proportions, even in translation (and often because of it) – an
unassailable Olympus. Even the Complete Study Edition I had initially planned seemed futile to
this end.
At the time I was working as the manager of a video rental outlet, and consequently thought first of
the film industry. Why, I wondered, had such a graphically visual tale never reached the silver
screen? And, more importantly, why should it not now, in this day and age of wondrous digital
imagery? And so I set to work.
I must confess that at this point the thought of writing a novel did, in fact, occur to me. In truth, I
had gone to college in the first place with the intention of improving my writing skills and studying
the great works of literature to that end, as I had already begun one novel when I realized I had no
idea whatever what I was doing with it. Thus my college days began at the belated age of twenty-
eight. I have not yet returned to that first novel (although I intend to), but as it turns out I think I was
on the right track all along. Still, the education proved useful, as it ever should.
Yet the thought of adapting such a densely compacted work such as is the Beowulf poem into a
full-fledged narrative page-turner frankly daunted me (and rightfully so, I can now attest). Writing a
hundred page screenplay seemed far the easier task. So with that in mind two years of my life flew
by (as they ever will) in completing the final draft of a script which would never sell, not (in my
opinion, at any rate) for lack of quality, but because in that time two other script adaptations did
sell. Up to that point there had never been a film version of Beowulf, just as there were no full-
length novelizations (more on this in a minute). Now there were two films in the works, neither of
which was mine. The frustration of such a futile endeavor can only be fully understood by those
who have thrown years of their life into something that they loved, hoping one day to see it take
flight, only to have it fall and crumble into dust instead. Such must have been the Wright Brothers’
first attempts.
And yet, they did not give up.
Nor would I. I had put far too much effort into this monstrosity (as it had by this time become – the
script weighed in at 136 pages at its shortest edit: a detracting factor to many of the agents and
studios I spoke to) to toss it lightly aside. Two years of research, another two in learning the craft
of screenwriting, at least to the degree that a completed fourth draft script was humming happily
through the matrix of my inkjet printer, and nothing to show for it but a pile of useless paper filed
away upon some shelf in the catacombs of Hollywood’s Writers Guild West.
Thus this book was born.
Through the vagaries of Fate (or, more likely, the ill-devised intentions of its author), I plodded on,
thinking now, ironically, that it would be easier to write the novel since I had already done the
script. All I had to do was interject some narrative description, flesh out the characters with a bit
more dialogue, and a novel would appear.
This proved to be far from the truth.
In composing the film script I had inevitably altered much of the original storyline, due to the brevity
and visual nature of that medium. Those who complain, when leaving the theater on seeing a film
adapted from a novel, that it was “not like the book,” will assuredly have never tried their hand at
that arduous task themselves. One may as well turn a painting into a pop song and say it isn’t like
the canvas. The two are not the same. However, I must agree with these critiques on at least one
point, and say that film adaptations are rarely as good as their original (and I include in this criticism
the two recent film versions of this story). Yet that does not invalidate the effort. Often much is
gained by the translation, even while something else is lost. One must simply look to the former,
while gracefully relinquishing the latter (I will say here that the three recent Lord of the Rings films
in my opinion added far more than they took away, a rare feat indeed).
My main difficulty in now adapting an adaptation to a new medium was that in creating the one I
had inevitably disregarded the needs of the other. The timeline was shortened, superfluous
characters deleted (or combined), extraneous matter expunged, and internal thought processes
eliminated (not that there is much of this in the original poem, though there must be in any good
novel). Now I had to reverse that process, reinsert deleted material, alter the timeline once more,
resurrect dead characters, create new material to fill in the ominous void that lay like Grendel’s
mere between the empty covers that would soon contain it. Where a character died in one scene,
now they must live; where a plot point was skipped, it now had to sever two other points originally
designed to flow together; nothing now could be left out, if I would achieve my aim of bringing the
original story back to life. The process, I discovered, was ten times the work it would have been
had I simply written the novel first (I use the term simply here in a very relative sense).
Indeed, I balked at many of the changes I now faced, some so enormous in the scope of their
impact that I honestly saw no way to incorporate them. And, in fact, in one major case, did not.
That is, until, having completed (after several more years) what I thought was a finished novel, I
could not sleep nights for the omission, and literally paced the floor in the wee hours debating the
matter with myself, much like Smeagol fighting off the evil urge of Gollum.
In the end, it came down to intent. My goal in adapting the original poem to the novel form had
ever been to bring the original tale as completely and accurately as possible to a contemporary
audience, out of the tomb in which it has so long lain, a realm into which only museum curators have
ready access.
Yet since that was my intent, nothing short of completeness would satisfy.
There have been up to this point in time only a few attempts at novelizing the poem. Aside from a
dozen or so short story versions spanning the entire 20th century (these being on average 50-100
pages in length), there have been only three prose adaptations of considerable length and originality,
these being John Gardner’s excellent 1971 novella Grendel (in itself short at 174 pages), Michael
Crichton’s muddled 1976 novella Eaters of the Dead (188 pages including appendix), and Parke
Godwin’s 1995 novel The Tower of Beowulf (at just over 300 pages the only one of the three to
be truly classified as a novel). There is now out as well a novelization of the 2007 animated film (at
roughly 350 pages), which I have not read, not caring much for the movie (with its typically horrific
fantasy epic dialogue). Each of these is fascinating in their own way, and each has serious
shortcomings with regards to accuracy and completeness with regards to the original work.
Gardner’s work was highly praised, and rightly so, as it told the story from the wonderfully
inventive perspective of the ogre Grendel, a deeply philosophical work steeped almost entirely in
internal monologue, exploring the very relevant themes of relative morality and social segregation.
And yet, inevitably, it only covers the one episode of the many episodes which comprise the whole,
and with almost more regard to our contemporary culture that the story’s own.
Likewise, Godwin’s novel covers only one aspect of the original tale: the mythological, of which it
adds or invents far more than it retains with regard to the poem, while ignoring all of the many
important historical elements interwoven though the tale (a common practice even among literary
scholars, and one of the foremost arguments against most adaptations: that of inaccuracy).
And while Crichton must be praised for his research (as always), his rendition deviates more than
the others in placing the tale four hundred years distant from its source and imposing an entirely
unrelated Arabic chronicle upon its fabric. Four hundred years may seem insignificant when viewing
an epoch so far removed from our own, but placing Beowulf (an early 6th century figure) in the
10th century is equivalent to placing Shakespeare among us today, an unforgivable error. So vague
is the connection between Crichton’s Buliwyf and Beowulf that few readers seem even aware of it.
I mean none of this as a disparagement of these authors’ work in general, only of these specific
works with regard to their accuracy of adaptation, and thus, their representation of the original.
And so, having determined that a full-scale novelization was due and justified, I made a new start,
one of many over the course of the six or so years this novel consumed me. I say or so, because,
as with so much else in life, it came in fits and starts, and was worked on in between other affairs of
daily life, so that much time went by when little work was done, and much work was done in very
little time. Yet the overall span of time was vastly more than anticipated.
space and budget constraints (and very likely a limited interest among the readership)
was relegated to the publisher’s web page.
Adapting a classic work of literature into a modern idiom is rarely a simple process, and less so
when that work is a fifteen hundred year old poem over which scholars argue to this day and
students groan at midterm. My reasons for doing so are as vague today as they likely were ten
years ago when first I undertook this project, ostensibly to bring an obscure but captivating tale to a
modern audience.
Back then I was an aspiring student of English literature, destined, in all likelihood, to graduate from
the prodigious ranks of the groaning pupil to the only slightly more prestigious order of academia,
doomed to inflict the terrors of Beowulf upon an endless procession of would-be accountants and
auto mechanics (no offense to either profession: I rely equally on both).
And yet, that which had for so long been a curse to so many was for me nothing short of a
revelation. I devoured Beowulf. I relished it. I studied the ancient Anglo-Saxon in which is was
written that I might read it in its original language. I blew off other courses of less interest in order
that I might stay another hour in the library, pouring over the seemingly endless critiques and
analyses of its interweaving structure and cryptic themes, all the while compiling my own line-by-
line translation that I might better comprehend the subtle shadings of its language.
But all for what?, I had to ask – at some point between gaining an A+ in Honors Medieval
Literature and a D in the tedious honors colloquium History of The Crusades (my one and only
D, achieved, I might add, due to my failure to appear for the final exam). What does one do with
an excess of useless facts other than teach it to others that they might do the same? The world did
not need yet another verse translation to weigh down the shelves of college libraries and the desks
of the uninterested. For me the story lived, it inhabited the very air I breathed, and yet to the
average reader it lay as dead on the page as the author who first wrote it: an epic struggle to
understand, a saga of Herculean proportions, even in translation (and often because of it) – an
unassailable Olympus. Even the Complete Study Edition I had initially planned seemed futile to
this end.
At the time I was working as the manager of a video rental outlet, and consequently thought first of
the film industry. Why, I wondered, had such a graphically visual tale never reached the silver
screen? And, more importantly, why should it not now, in this day and age of wondrous digital
imagery? And so I set to work.
I must confess that at this point the thought of writing a novel did, in fact, occur to me. In truth, I
had gone to college in the first place with the intention of improving my writing skills and studying
the great works of literature to that end, as I had already begun one novel when I realized I had no
idea whatever what I was doing with it. Thus my college days began at the belated age of twenty-
eight. I have not yet returned to that first novel (although I intend to), but as it turns out I think I was
on the right track all along. Still, the education proved useful, as it ever should.
Yet the thought of adapting such a densely compacted work such as is the Beowulf poem into a
full-fledged narrative page-turner frankly daunted me (and rightfully so, I can now attest). Writing a
hundred page screenplay seemed far the easier task. So with that in mind two years of my life flew
by (as they ever will) in completing the final draft of a script which would never sell, not (in my
opinion, at any rate) for lack of quality, but because in that time two other script adaptations did
sell. Up to that point there had never been a film version of Beowulf, just as there were no full-
length novelizations (more on this in a minute). Now there were two films in the works, neither of
which was mine. The frustration of such a futile endeavor can only be fully understood by those
who have thrown years of their life into something that they loved, hoping one day to see it take
flight, only to have it fall and crumble into dust instead. Such must have been the Wright Brothers’
first attempts.
And yet, they did not give up.
Nor would I. I had put far too much effort into this monstrosity (as it had by this time become – the
script weighed in at 136 pages at its shortest edit: a detracting factor to many of the agents and
studios I spoke to) to toss it lightly aside. Two years of research, another two in learning the craft
of screenwriting, at least to the degree that a completed fourth draft script was humming happily
through the matrix of my inkjet printer, and nothing to show for it but a pile of useless paper filed
away upon some shelf in the catacombs of Hollywood’s Writers Guild West.
Thus this book was born.
Through the vagaries of Fate (or, more likely, the ill-devised intentions of its author), I plodded on,
thinking now, ironically, that it would be easier to write the novel since I had already done the
script. All I had to do was interject some narrative description, flesh out the characters with a bit
more dialogue, and a novel would appear.
This proved to be far from the truth.
In composing the film script I had inevitably altered much of the original storyline, due to the brevity
and visual nature of that medium. Those who complain, when leaving the theater on seeing a film
adapted from a novel, that it was “not like the book,” will assuredly have never tried their hand at
that arduous task themselves. One may as well turn a painting into a pop song and say it isn’t like
the canvas. The two are not the same. However, I must agree with these critiques on at least one
point, and say that film adaptations are rarely as good as their original (and I include in this criticism
the two recent film versions of this story). Yet that does not invalidate the effort. Often much is
gained by the translation, even while something else is lost. One must simply look to the former,
while gracefully relinquishing the latter (I will say here that the three recent Lord of the Rings films
in my opinion added far more than they took away, a rare feat indeed).
My main difficulty in now adapting an adaptation to a new medium was that in creating the one I
had inevitably disregarded the needs of the other. The timeline was shortened, superfluous
characters deleted (or combined), extraneous matter expunged, and internal thought processes
eliminated (not that there is much of this in the original poem, though there must be in any good
novel). Now I had to reverse that process, reinsert deleted material, alter the timeline once more,
resurrect dead characters, create new material to fill in the ominous void that lay like Grendel’s
mere between the empty covers that would soon contain it. Where a character died in one scene,
now they must live; where a plot point was skipped, it now had to sever two other points originally
designed to flow together; nothing now could be left out, if I would achieve my aim of bringing the
original story back to life. The process, I discovered, was ten times the work it would have been
had I simply written the novel first (I use the term simply here in a very relative sense).
Indeed, I balked at many of the changes I now faced, some so enormous in the scope of their
impact that I honestly saw no way to incorporate them. And, in fact, in one major case, did not.
That is, until, having completed (after several more years) what I thought was a finished novel, I
could not sleep nights for the omission, and literally paced the floor in the wee hours debating the
matter with myself, much like Smeagol fighting off the evil urge of Gollum.
In the end, it came down to intent. My goal in adapting the original poem to the novel form had
ever been to bring the original tale as completely and accurately as possible to a contemporary
audience, out of the tomb in which it has so long lain, a realm into which only museum curators have
ready access.
Yet since that was my intent, nothing short of completeness would satisfy.
There have been up to this point in time only a few attempts at novelizing the poem. Aside from a
dozen or so short story versions spanning the entire 20th century (these being on average 50-100
pages in length), there have been only three prose adaptations of considerable length and originality,
these being John Gardner’s excellent 1971 novella Grendel (in itself short at 174 pages), Michael
Crichton’s muddled 1976 novella Eaters of the Dead (188 pages including appendix), and Parke
Godwin’s 1995 novel The Tower of Beowulf (at just over 300 pages the only one of the three to
be truly classified as a novel). There is now out as well a novelization of the 2007 animated film (at
roughly 350 pages), which I have not read, not caring much for the movie (with its typically horrific
fantasy epic dialogue). Each of these is fascinating in their own way, and each has serious
shortcomings with regards to accuracy and completeness with regards to the original work.
Gardner’s work was highly praised, and rightly so, as it told the story from the wonderfully
inventive perspective of the ogre Grendel, a deeply philosophical work steeped almost entirely in
internal monologue, exploring the very relevant themes of relative morality and social segregation.
And yet, inevitably, it only covers the one episode of the many episodes which comprise the whole,
and with almost more regard to our contemporary culture that the story’s own.
Likewise, Godwin’s novel covers only one aspect of the original tale: the mythological, of which it
adds or invents far more than it retains with regard to the poem, while ignoring all of the many
important historical elements interwoven though the tale (a common practice even among literary
scholars, and one of the foremost arguments against most adaptations: that of inaccuracy).
And while Crichton must be praised for his research (as always), his rendition deviates more than
the others in placing the tale four hundred years distant from its source and imposing an entirely
unrelated Arabic chronicle upon its fabric. Four hundred years may seem insignificant when viewing
an epoch so far removed from our own, but placing Beowulf (an early 6th century figure) in the
10th century is equivalent to placing Shakespeare among us today, an unforgivable error. So vague
is the connection between Crichton’s Buliwyf and Beowulf that few readers seem even aware of it.
I mean none of this as a disparagement of these authors’ work in general, only of these specific
works with regard to their accuracy of adaptation, and thus, their representation of the original.
And so, having determined that a full-scale novelization was due and justified, I made a new start,
one of many over the course of the six or so years this novel consumed me. I say or so, because,
as with so much else in life, it came in fits and starts, and was worked on in between other affairs of
daily life, so that much time went by when little work was done, and much work was done in very
little time. Yet the overall span of time was vastly more than anticipated.
| AFTERWORD |
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| How This Novel Came To Be, or, What Was I Thinking? As Well As an Explanation of the Adaptation Process |
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| AVAILABLE NOW from Amazon.com |