Monday, December 18, 2006

Hannibal Lecter's Creator Must Be Mad

Mad that everyone has turned on him, that is. Once, Thomas Harris was wildly overpraised as one of the great thriller writers of all time. "Red Dragon" and "The Silence of the Lambs" were touted as modern masterpieces of horror. And "Silence" was turned into a blockbuster, Oscar-winning film that seemed to cement Harris among the gods. Then he kept writing. Now, several more movie adaptations have been flops and his books "Hannibal" and now "Hannibal Rising" have been pilloried as pathetic, laughaby bad works. This week, "Hannibal Rising" debuts at only #6 on the NYTimes bestseller list. Harris surely worked just as hard on these books as the others and he must be wondering, "What the hell happened?"

On the nonfiction list, Barack Obama is back on tiop with his "Audacity Of Hope." Every Presidential candidate seems to trot out a book these days and with "Hope" at #1, maybe Obama is the frontrunner after all. And while the movie version of "Charlotte's Web" is a flop, at least it's sending the EB White classic back onto the charts.

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