The Columbia University professor Sidney Morgenbesser used to compare the three leading schools of philosophy to the three leading schools of umpiring the game of baseball. Picture a man in black standing behind the home plate. Here are the ways he decides what is a strike, and what isn’t:
• One: I call them as I see them.
• Two: I call them as they are.
• Three: They are because I call them.
In some ways, the work of a screenwriter adapting a book is not at all unlike the work of Morgenbesser’s umpire:
• One: I call them as I see them. Meaning: I look for the truth of the book, its essence rare – and I work to preserve that truth even as I sell everything else down the river. I here think of that pre-eminent ...
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