5:05 pm: I arrive at Denver International Airport for a 5:30 flight to San Francisco. I'm tearing down the moving walkways, shouting "Sorry!" over my shoulder as I jostle the bags of people standing too far to the left and not far enough to the right. Past security with no time-consuming jokes about bombs and guns, and a stop on a dime in front of the arrival/departure computers. A rapid scan tells me I have no departure gate, just an empty square of black. This confounds me only until I learn the nasty truth: my flight is cancelled. Should have called ahead of time.

So what do I do in this unexpected situation? Calculate my TKBA (Time to Kill Before Arrival) is approximately six hours. I have no book because I am "between books right now." I do, perhaps, what you would do: reluctantly take $15 out of my wallet and head for the newsstand to buy a book.

Once there, I encounter dilemmas vast and intimidating, which I will boil down to this basic question: what is a regular girl to do? Thriller, or Oprah's Book Club choice? This might seem obvious to some, but this was hard for me. I'm not really the fast-read, thriller type. I try to pose as a reader of "literature" before "novels," which is quibbling over bits. But in the end, I figured Oprah had already told plenty of people what to think about Icy Sparks. I would undertake the emergency task of actually reading a book that went straight to movie. I bought Hannibal, by Thomas Harris.

I tore right into it, enjoying the prospect of getting the shit scared out of me during a raging Front Range storm. True to Harris's style, this didn't happen right away.

First he reminds us of just how smart and tasteful (in matters of culture and style) this bastard Dr. Lecter is, and just how straight-shootingly traditional Special Agent Clarice Starling is by comparison. But as the book unspools, he aligns them in the reader's eyes, pitting them against the obstacles of incompetence and tastelessness instead of each other. I liked that, a lot. A common enemy to unite an FBI agent and a cannibal? Few people are comfortable acknowledging this sort of thing. Harris walks the line-- he's got morals, flair, and big brass balls.

Paragraph six is a good time to admit I haven't seen the movie. So we're not going to discuss the movie again, until paragraph nine. This book is an increasingly fast read (duh-- the fruit of the airport tree), and it gives you a place that is excitingly witty and artful to escape the conversation of the not so witty and artful yuppies across from you, who are boastfully engaging in commuter conversation loudly enough to annoy everyone in a three-gate radius. I fancy Hannibal chewing on their tongues in the theatre of my mind and then flash them a charming smile. And thus I learn tolerance from Thomas Harris.

We follow Lecter, massively more intelligent than the masoginistic men who pursue him, across three continents, and all the time Anthony Hopkins, I mean Hannibal Lecter, has time to savor ridiculously expensive wines and green oysters. Mason Verger, a sadistic survivor of Lecter's earlier crimes without a face but with a pet brutal moray eel, has sent professional Sardinian kidnappers after Hannibal with orders to feed him alive to specially-bred killer boars, while Mason watches via videotape. Doesn't that sound good? Why don't they put that on the book jacket? Then I wouldn't have even hesitated.

Starling, too, becomes the hunted as Verger's team decides she is the best bait to bring Lecter out of hiding. Good and evil take a tumble in the spin cycle and come out faded, puffy-haired, and nearly indistinguishable.

I won't spoil it by telling you about the moments in which I gasped and caught my breath or said out loud "Fucking hell!" I will tell you that the woman next to me on the plane was reading the same book, and for the second time. I will tell you that according to my sources who did see the movie, the ending is not at all the same. I won't say which is better. I will say that I bet the book's ending is twice as interesting, twice as daring, infinitely more outraging, and it will knock your fucking socks off.

So, whatever. Be satisfied with your cinematic opium if that's your bag. Or figure Jodie Foster was right about that cheesy screenplay and read the book. Hannibal is waiting, his napkin tucked under his chin. Goody, goody. B --Andrea Moore

GO-GO * ART * MOVIES * MUSIC * BOOKS * STYLE * THEATER * DINING * BARS * YEARBOOK * ABOUT GO-GO * * BACK ISSUES * MUSIC SAMPLER * MEDIA REVIEWS * REVIEW INDEX *