It is a truth universally acknowledged that if a novel finds critical acclaim and/or general popularity, someone will find themselves keen to adapt it into a movie. Many of the best films of all time have been adapted from works of literature, after all, and enough so that there are two screenplay awards given out at the Oscars, for example: one for original screenplay, and the other for adapted screenplay (with adapted screenplays often – though not always – being based on books).
But some novels are unwieldy behemoths, or otherwise so well-suited to being read that film adaptations can prove difficult. History is filled with difficult adaptation attempts that did still ultimately come to fruition; look at Frank Herbert’s once purportedly unadaptable novel Dune, for example, which was made into an interesting yet flawed movie in 1984, and then a more successful two-part epic in the early 2020s. That’s necessary as preamble to say that it’s hard to know for sure whether something will or won’t get adapted for certain… but in the case of these novels, for one reason or another, a traditional film adaptation seems particularly unlikely. Time will ultimately tell, and shoes may need to be eaten. But until then, consider these books (probably) unadaptable.
10 ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’ (1973)
Author: Thomas Pynchon
Even though much of Gravity’s Rainbow takes place (seemingly) around the closing days of World War II, it at one point “quotes” the U.S. President from 1969 to 1974, Richard Nixon, saying “What?” That’s it. But that word followed by that punctuation mark summarizes all 760 pages of this absolutely bizarre and intentionally scattershot novel by the elusive Thomas Pynchon. It is impossible to summarize or even comprehend in the traditional sense.
Gravity’s Rainbow has a historical context but frequently gets surreal and dreamlike, never being entirely clear about what is what. It blends comedy, fantasy, war, drama, surreal horror, and (maybe) science fiction into one endlessly trippy and dizzying story that actually contains dozens of subplots (probably) and what feels like hundreds of characters. The length, scope, and taboo content (odd sexual escapades are near-constant) would make Gravity’s Rainbow a nightmare to condense into a movie. But, to Paul Thomas Anderson’s credit, he did manage to make a film out of another Pynchon novel, Inherent Vice, which is still bizarre but definitely more “comprehensible,” narratively speaking.
9 ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ (1951)
Author: J. D. Salinger
Unlike some other novels that will probably never receive a film adaptation, The Catcher in the Rye could well receive an adaptation fairly easily. It’s not a lengthy story, and centers on one central character, Holden Caulfield, a troubled young man who details his life and the sorts of things he thinks about, not to mention feels frustrated by, within the world he lives in.
However, the novel’s author, J. D. Salinger, famously rejected offers for The Catcher in the Rye to make the jump to the big screen, and since his passing in 2010, his estate has similarly blocked the notion of it happening. That’s the situation, really. Plenty of people would make official adaptations, if they could, but the author was outspoken about none coming to fruition, and his wishes have continued to be upheld since he passed away.
8 ‘House of Leaves’ (2000)
Author: Mark Z. Danielewski
If House of Leaves were to be made into a movie, it would have to be a very experimental horror film, and might well have to be the length of three movies, given how much ground this mammoth work of literature covers. Essentially, House of Leaves is a story within a story within a story, revolving around one man trying to piece together another man’s unfinished notes about a mysterious documentary that probably doesn’t exist. There’s also another layer, with an editor making his/her own notes about the notes the first man made about the second man’s notes that analyzed the “documentary.”
House of Leaves not only has multiple levels, but it also has some unique decisions regarding its formatting and presentation that would be hard to replicate outside the written word. Like Gravity’s Rainbow, it’s also an extremely long novel and a rather sexually explicit one, so it’s also got those factors against it when it comes to the idea of a movie adaptation.
7 ‘Infinite Jest’ (1996)
Author: David Foster Wallace
Oh yeah, that’s another thing about House of Leaves: there’s enough content in the footnotes for pretty much an entire separate novel, and the same can be said about Infinite Jest. In fact, the footnotes here might well be even more extensive and necessary for the experience of reading what’s already a gargantuan book. It’s over 900 pages without considering the footnotes, and over 1000 pages (!) with the footnotes.
Its length and commitment to being unconventional (to say it pushes the boundaries of what a novel is would be an understatement) make it a likely no-go for any movie adaptations. Saying so feels uncontroversial, but there is a good biographical film about its author, David Foster Wallace, called The End of the Tour, which helps shed light on Wallace, what he struggled with, and how he viewed the world.
6 ‘The Silmarillion’ (1977)
Author: J. R. R. Tolkien
The idea of adapting The Silmarillion is a complex one for a number of reasons, even though the work is linked to The Lord of the Rings saga, which, of course, had three exceedingly popular film adaptations in the early 2000s. The story told in The Lord of the Rings is huge and expansive, but it can be seen as a singular narrative, whereas The Silmarillion is more of a compilation of various stories, myths, and retellings of events that have happened in Middle-earth’s vast history, rather than a traditional novel.
The Silmarillion is also mostly off-limits adaptation-wise, according to J. R. R. Tolkien’s estate, which puts it in the same boat as The Catcher in the Rye. An adaptation could be possible, but it would be exceedingly difficult. And though The Rings of Power kind of adapts some material from The Silmarillion, some parts remain off-limits (and that’s a TV series in the first place, which naturally has more runtime to work with than a film adaptation would).
5 ‘Maus’ (1991)
Author: Art Spiegelman
Making either a feature film or a documentary about the Holocaust is always risky, and has to be done with a great degree of care, given how monumentally devastating it was as a historical event. Steven Spielberg’sSchindler’s List largely succeeds, though even then, it isn’t without its critics. The definitive story about the event, however, might well be the graphic novel, Maus.
Art Spiegelman details his father’s experiences living in Poland before, during, and then after the Holocaust, with an engaging framing device that sheds light on the troubled relationship between Art and his father, and with novel presentation that sees various races/groups of people represented by animals throughout. It could work as a grim and confronting animated film, but would be difficult to properly adapt. The bigger obstacle, however, is Spiegelman’s own wishes to keep Maus as a graphic novel, and away from the big screen for reasons that are more than understandable.
4 ‘Blood Meridian; or, The Evening Redness in the West’ (1985)
Author: Cormac McCarthy
Blood Meridian; or, The Evening Redness in the West is, according to some, Cormac McCarthy’s greatest contribution to literature, even if other works of his – like The Road and No Country for Old Men – are a little more well-known, thanks to well-received film adaptations. Blood Meridian has faced considerable hurdles when it comes to being adapted. People want to, but it hasn’t been easy to actually do.
The novel is horrendously violent and downbeat, even compared to McCarthy’s other works, so a faithful adaptation would likely be too gruesome for most viewers. There’s also every chance that the things one can imagine – thanks to McCarthy’s stark, poetic, and no-nonsense prose – would be more visceral and unnerving than anything seen on screen, which begs the question of whether an appropriately executed adaptation could do this grim anti-Western justice. Of all the examples here, a film of Blood Meridian seems the most likely, but it’s been nearly 40 years and there’s still a while to go, it seems, before a movie of this book can exist.
3 ‘At the Mountains of Madness’ (1936)
Author: H. P. Lovecraft
Perhaps a little like Blood Meridian, At the Mountains of Madness is the kind of story that could be adapted to film, but doing so would be very difficult. Also, a little like Blood Meridian, despite Lovecraftian horror being consistently popular (much like how McCarthy’s stories have proven surprisingly appealing to many), At the Mountains of Madness has a history of pre-production woes that have ensured an adaptation hasn’t been able to truly get off the ground.
It’s essentially a fact that Guillermo del Toro would be able to do such a story justice, and he’s expressed interest in doing an At the Mountains of Madness film time and again, but it’s continued to elude him. This is one of those examples where it might be best to never say never… though if you’re feeling a little less optimistic, you could also say, “It feels unlikely to happen.”
2 ‘A Confederacy of Dunces’ (1980)
Author: John Kennedy Toole
A Confederacy of Dunces might well have one of the best titles in the history of literature, and it has a novel (pun intended) premise, too. It follows a man in his early 30s named Ignatius J. Reilly who has various misadventures while living in New Orleans during the 1960s, feeling satirical, funny, and surprisingly adventurous in its own singular way… and in a manner uniquely suited to the written word.
When it comes to the idea of adapting A Confederacy of Dunces to the big screen, the notion of it being something of a cursed idea is prominent, because various actors and filmmakers have been attached to it at some point, but for various reasons, it’s never worked out. Even a biographical film about Thelma Toole, the mother of A Confederacy of Dunces’ author, John Kennedy Toole, seems stuck in its own sort of development hell, having been announced in early 2022 but still being nowhere to be seen.
1 ‘Against the Day’ (2006)
Author: Thomas Pynchon
If there’s one Thomas Pynchon novel that could well be even less adaptable than the aforementioned Gravity’s Rainbow, it’s probably Against the Day. This 2006 novel joins the likes of Infinite Jest as being the rare book to be a single work running for over 1000 pages. Against the Day can be described as something of an epic historical novel, but that would be oversimplifying it.
It might not be as confronting, dizzying, or quite as surreal as Gravity’s Rainbow, but it’s even longer and jumps around between a greater number of characters, all spread out across the world, whereas Gravity’s Rainbow was (mostly) contained to just Europe. Calling Against the Day a huge novel is an understatement, and so it basically goes without saying that, alongside any Pynchon novel that isn’t Inherent Vice, a movie adaptation is rather unlikely.
