The book is good — Styron’s prose is outstanding — but it’s too long; I like the movie better, because Styron does tend to get into sidebars that don’t feel necessary to the story, and they seem like, you know, he did the research on these Polish resistance cells and by God he’s going to use it whether it moves the plot forward or not.   I know it’s hard to cut passages that were months in the crafting, but sometimes you gotta do it; Durrfeld, the lengthy comparisons between Jews and Southerners, Sophie’s first suicide attempt, the Blackstock backstory, most of that could have been chopped.   And the way the movie sets up the ending is, I think, more graceful; in the book, the motivations are over-explained and a bit over-foreshadowed, and they’re still not terribly convincing for it, partly because the Sophie of the book is a much more volatile, complex character.   But frankly, even that seems somewhat random — like he had certain scenes in mind and wasn’t as concerned as he could have been with keeping the characters consistent (her drinking is an example; it feels tacked on, like Styron’s trying to sell it).   Of course, my complaints of this nature could stem from the fact that I’ve seen the movie several times and went into the book with that coloring it.   It’s still absolutely worth reading, but I think the movie does a better job of foregrounding what’s important without feeling like it has to provide academic proofs.   (6/22/06)

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