He may have gone out with the sole intention of finding fodder for an column with a rapidly approaching deadline, but instead, he stumbled into a life transformation. Steve Lopez documents his fateful meeting with Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, a homeless man playing a two-stringed violin in that Los Angeles park, along with the subsequent changes both their lives underwent as a result of their developing friendship in the book The Soloist. With the motion picture adaptation released last month, the media hype around this story had me intrigued, and after reading the book, I immediately wanted to see how the story was transferred to the big screen.
Steve Lopez first wrote about Mr. Ayers in his column for the LA Times in April of 2005, and he continued to share his story through nine additional columns throughout that year. The book draws upon the stories he initially assembled for columns, but fleshes them out in even greater detail and adds more personal reflections to the mix. The story of Mr. Ayers is heartbreaking, yet so unfortunately common among the vast numbers of homeless people with mental illness. It’s impossible to not feel compassion and sadness as you read this book– through the sharing of one individual story, it’s becomes clear as day that the mental health system has too many cracks and flaws to effectively serve the population who need it most. Written with the straightforward voice of a journalist, The Soloist is a quick and emotional read that leaves you transformed along with the author.
Just as the Memorial Day movies were making their debuts, my husband and I got the opportunity to take a friend up on a free babysitting offer, and we were fortunate enough to find The Soloist still playing in a few of the smaller theaters in the area. Now, it’s already been well established that I’m a stickler when it comes to movie adaptations of books, and it’s true again. Only this time, it’s not a fictional narrative that’s being messed with, it’s a true-life story. So, I just didn’t see the need for the changes they made- big and small. (And, if I was Steve Lopez’s wife, I’d be ticked– why did they feel the need to make him divorced??) The dramatic effects that the changes had weren’t worth it, in my opinion, because the true story is amazing enough.
The film made the story of Nathaniel Anthony Ayers much more linear than Lopez’s book account portrayed. The emotions seemed simplified, and somehow the compassion that I read in Lopez’s book didn’t quite translate in the same way to the big screen version– the subtlety of reality was lost in favor of putting the puzzle of a movie together. Overall, if you’re interested in the real story, skip the film and take the time to do some reading– go for the fantastic book, or the original columns at the very least. If you’re interested, Amazon currently has bargain prices (as low as $3.99!) on the movie tie-in paperback and the hardcovers, as well.
Dawn likes to call my thoughts exactly her online home- the door’s always open if you’d like to drop by!
Great review! I enjoy this type of memoir/profile combo — where the author sort gets involved in the story. I actually bought one of those 3.99 copies. I couldn’t resist that!!
A friend of mine read it, and said it was similar in that way to Beautiful Boy (which she and I both read) — because the father is a journalist and he’s profiling his son’s addiction, but he’s obviously involved in the story — as a father.