Twinkle, Twinkle, Killer Kane (Paperback)

"Twinkle, Twinkle, Killer Kane" has been out of print for a long time, and the movie it was later made into, "The Ninth Configuration," while celebrated, is decidedly in the cult category. But the recent release of a "Ninth Configuration" DVD seems to have stirred up a little more excitement, judging from the reaction it is getting on this website, and maybe more people will be moved, as I was, to special order the novel it all sprang from.

Whether or not it's worth it is another question. "The Ninth Configuration" is my all-time favorite film, and even I had a tough time reading "Twinkle." Not because it's not good, or packed with the same philosophically probing, gut-wrenchingly hilarious dialogue that makes the film so special. But it's a choppy narrative, lacking the sense of mood and character that enriches the movie. I've only read one other William Peter Blatty book, "Demons Five, Exorcists Nothing," which was terrible, so maybe he's the rare storyteller who works better on screen than on the page. But I'd rather view this as an interesting rough draft of the project that would become a true classic in its film version.

"Twinkle, Twinkle, Killer Kane," published in 1966, may be one of the first novels to ever explore the theme of madness in the time of the Vietnam War. Blatty doesn't make the connection until the novel is more than half over, and it's not one he leans on too strongly (he would in the movie), but he certainly was onto something there, and should get points for that alone.

Otherwise, the book works for me mostly in the form of showing the many paths Blatty's imagination was taking as he thought through the story. There are some striking variations in the story we have here versus what we see in "The Ninth Configuration." The central character, Col. Kane, is more active and vocal a presence in the book, and you really can appreciate what Blatty (and actor Stacy Keach) did with the character onscreen to make him more of an enigma. Same with Dr. Fell, who was played so well by Ed Flanders in the film, but is bland and off-putting in the novel. He has little to do with Kane in the book, and would be improved upon vastly on film.

The dialogue is loopier at times, and not always in a good way, but there are some recognizable passages for fans of the movie.

"If God exists, he is a fink."

"A fink?"

"Or a foot. An omnipresent, omnipotent Foot! Do you think that is blasphemous?"

"Yes," said Kane. "I do."

"I believe I capitalized the 'F'."

That one got me laughing out loud, as did some other lines rewritten or excised in the film.

The concerns of the book, as with the film, is the existence or non-existence of God and the problem of evil in the world. There are some odd detours, though. The old house being used by the military to house lunatic veterans once belonged to a Bela Legosi-type movie actor, not the aristocrat mentioned in the movie, and there's a subplot involving the actor's legacy in a secret part of the estate. There's also some business involving a cost-conscious senator which seems to belong in a New Yorker cartoon. More to the point of the story that survives in "The Ninth Configuration," some of the asylum patients seem to have swapped identities.

I liked reading this book, and recommend it to others who love the film, even though they may find it as inchoate and choked with bad comic rimshots as I did. Blatty uses adverbs too much, and words like "scruted," but his gift for witty dialogue is evident. There are also sections where he works in some ideas left out of the movie which I found rather moving, and deepened my appreciation for what he was after.

"We're all miscast - one way or another," Kane says at one point. "Being born into this world: that's the ultimate miscasting."

This is a bit of a miscasting job, too, since it only came alive in screen form, but because it gave life to a great movie, I have to feel some gratitude. Life can be a brutal voyage, but having fellow passengers like Mr. Blatty makes for a more endurable ride.