The 67th Patient

After finishing Dave Eggers's fantastic PK tribute, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, yesterday, this morning I cracked open Dennis Lehane's Shutter Island, and damn if I didn't plow through six-eighths of that badboy before forcefully putting it down when it became dangerously clear that I was about to become one of those weirdos who reads an entire book in a day. Close one.

Sure, I've felt like utter sheisse these past ten days, this mysterious virus inflicting on me every ailment in its arsenal (I'm anticipating diarrhea or vomiting tomorrow, and then my flu bingo card can be complete), but there's always an upside, and my silver lining has been a smorgasbord of entertainment: reading, watching The Wire, and alternative medicine in the form of blowjobs. I've got my own Make-a-Wish Foundation up in here, and perhaps that's why I haven't gotten any better since the Thursday before last. Maybe I don't want to.

But I digress. Shutter Island is, despite Lehane's tendency to fall too much in love with his characters' dialog, as though while writing it he realized its potential as a screenplay and intentionally tried to Hollywoodize the back-and-forth repartee between his protagonist and his protagonist's partner, and the author's flogging of the word "and," one helluva read. My impetus to read the novel arrived when I realized that Lehane wrote Mystic River and Gone, Baby, Gone, two novels that inspired terrific films. That impetus grew more intense when I remembered that Lehane also wrote for The Wire, and anyone who wrote for that show, The Greatest Story Ever Told (my apologies to The Holy Bible, King James version) is forever canonized. Oh, the film adaptation is set to be released this October, directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, you say? In. Ininininin.

I'm a little dubious at the casting decisions to have Mark Ruffalo play yet another cop, Max von Sydow yet another menacing doctor, and Jackie Earl Haley yet another sociopath, but, hey, it's Scorsese, and America's Greatest Living Filmmaker has, after a couple of letdowns in the late 90's, been on somewhat of a roll. Sure, Gangs of New York was, all told, pretty crappy, but the master redeemed himself tenfold with The Aviator, the best film of 2004 and perhaps this decade, and The Departed. At his best, Scorsese is complemented by his actors, particularly Robert DeNiro, and his editor, the tremendously perfect Thelma Schoonmaker. Schoonmaker is editing Shutter Island, and Scorsese's new-millennial DeNiro, Leonardo DiCaprio, plays the lead.

I ask, what's not to like? Besides the iffy hallucination scenes in the trailer, that is. Not exactly a fan.

Predicted greatness hits theaters October 9, three years after, to the day, North Korea tested its first nuclear bomb, three years after -- also to the day -- I fell in love for the first time.