Christopher Priest's 1995 novel 'The Prestige' was adapted into a Christopher Nolan-directed film in 2006. Starring Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman as the two main leads, the film was both a critical and commercial success. Jonathan Nolan adapted the novel into a screenplay, and Priest has stated his approval for the film adaptation despite its changes to his original narrative. Here are three things that reading 'The Prestige' taught me.
1. Priest uses a framing device to tell his story. The main story is of the rivalry between Rupert Angier and Alfred Borden; their stories are told through diaries read by their future descendants. This provides an interesting distinction that makes the novel easy to read. Their sides of the story are revealed when it comes to the accidental miscarriage of Angier's wife, which is what drove the men apart in the first place. We learn the truth behind Alfred's magic trick: he leads not one life, but two. Seeing the other perspective shown through Angier's diary makes both men's characters even more distinct. Their respective great-grandchildren, Kate Angier and Andrew Westley, have their lives interspersed occasionally with the narratives established in their ancestors' diaries. In a way they represent the reader; their reactions to what they are reading provide something for the audience to bounce off of. On the whole, this novel showed me the power of using an effective framing device in a story and how it can impact the reader's experience with the novel. This is something I would like to try in the future with fiction writing; while it clearly takes extensive planning, it seems to pay off equally as well.
2. “Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called "The Pledge" ... The second act is called "The Turn" ... every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige"” (53). Priest's exploration of the dynamics of stage magic is what's most effective through the novel. A major theme of the novel is sacrifice. Even from the beginning, this is established: "All my life, as long as I can remember, I have had the feeling that someone else is sharing my life" (4). Borden later goes on to recount the story of a Chinese stage magician who had acted crippled for decades in order to fool his audience, and muses on the trade itself: "What will seem new or baffling to an audience is simply a technical challenge for other professionals" (66). On a deeper level, Priest understands the kinship between this stage magic and the story he's telling at the same time. This theme is explored even further in the film adaptation, which diverges significantly from the novel towards the end of the story. All stage magic requires suspension of disbelief from its audience; Priest banks on that to include fantastical elements in his novel. At its heart, the story is about the characters. What this taught me was an effective exploration of theme and how to make it compelling to the reader and how to reveal this as an author.
3. Finally, a third thing that I learned through reading 'The Prestige' was how to implement the dualism at the heart of the story. As I've said before, this is something I often try to include in my stories. It can be found in every facet of the novel. Borden and Angier live double lives as family men and stage magicians. Andrew, Borden's descendant, often feels like he lives with a twin brother. Borden suffers identity crises at many points in time: "My life was in two distinct halves, kept emphatically apart, neither side suspected the other existed" (85). In terms of the magic, what happens behind the scenes is as important as how it is presented. Our narrators are inevitably unreliable; they have secrets to keep, from each other and in some cases, themselves. The Pledge and the Turn represent the setup, and the Prestige is the payoff. The Prestige is the novel's effect in and of itself; the writing represents the setup. Priest's clear understanding of the dichotomies he sets up are offset by his also clear understanding of the balances he must establish by the end of the story. I'm also trying to establish something similar in my revision for a memoir-genre work I'm currently working on. Seeing how Priest makes this run through the entire novel was inspiring and showed me a lot on how to do this. The characters should be the primary reflectors of the themes they're experience and the lessons they're learning.
1. Priest uses a framing device to tell his story. The main story is of the rivalry between Rupert Angier and Alfred Borden; their stories are told through diaries read by their future descendants. This provides an interesting distinction that makes the novel easy to read. Their sides of the story are revealed when it comes to the accidental miscarriage of Angier's wife, which is what drove the men apart in the first place. We learn the truth behind Alfred's magic trick: he leads not one life, but two. Seeing the other perspective shown through Angier's diary makes both men's characters even more distinct. Their respective great-grandchildren, Kate Angier and Andrew Westley, have their lives interspersed occasionally with the narratives established in their ancestors' diaries. In a way they represent the reader; their reactions to what they are reading provide something for the audience to bounce off of. On the whole, this novel showed me the power of using an effective framing device in a story and how it can impact the reader's experience with the novel. This is something I would like to try in the future with fiction writing; while it clearly takes extensive planning, it seems to pay off equally as well.
2. “Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called "The Pledge" ... The second act is called "The Turn" ... every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige"” (53). Priest's exploration of the dynamics of stage magic is what's most effective through the novel. A major theme of the novel is sacrifice. Even from the beginning, this is established: "All my life, as long as I can remember, I have had the feeling that someone else is sharing my life" (4). Borden later goes on to recount the story of a Chinese stage magician who had acted crippled for decades in order to fool his audience, and muses on the trade itself: "What will seem new or baffling to an audience is simply a technical challenge for other professionals" (66). On a deeper level, Priest understands the kinship between this stage magic and the story he's telling at the same time. This theme is explored even further in the film adaptation, which diverges significantly from the novel towards the end of the story. All stage magic requires suspension of disbelief from its audience; Priest banks on that to include fantastical elements in his novel. At its heart, the story is about the characters. What this taught me was an effective exploration of theme and how to make it compelling to the reader and how to reveal this as an author.
3. Finally, a third thing that I learned through reading 'The Prestige' was how to implement the dualism at the heart of the story. As I've said before, this is something I often try to include in my stories. It can be found in every facet of the novel. Borden and Angier live double lives as family men and stage magicians. Andrew, Borden's descendant, often feels like he lives with a twin brother. Borden suffers identity crises at many points in time: "My life was in two distinct halves, kept emphatically apart, neither side suspected the other existed" (85). In terms of the magic, what happens behind the scenes is as important as how it is presented. Our narrators are inevitably unreliable; they have secrets to keep, from each other and in some cases, themselves. The Pledge and the Turn represent the setup, and the Prestige is the payoff. The Prestige is the novel's effect in and of itself; the writing represents the setup. Priest's clear understanding of the dichotomies he sets up are offset by his also clear understanding of the balances he must establish by the end of the story. I'm also trying to establish something similar in my revision for a memoir-genre work I'm currently working on. Seeing how Priest makes this run through the entire novel was inspiring and showed me a lot on how to do this. The characters should be the primary reflectors of the themes they're experience and the lessons they're learning.