We’re Really Trying This Again? Another Orson Scott Card Book-to-Movie

Thom Allen

This time it’s his short story “Unaccompanied Sonata,” in which a boy is raised to be a musical composer without being allowed to hear any other music. But when he does happen to hear the music of Bach, at the age of 30, he is barred from finishing his composition or ever making music again.

As is often the case with OSC, the apparently unintended irony is thick. How hard it must be, indeed, to have to hide from anything that might stimulate you the wrong way…and then once you find it, to be forced to repress your true self forever.

Still, I thought it had been pretty well established that working with the anti-gay Card is commercial poison. If you can’t make a megahit out of his most acclaimed novel, is it really worth it for one without even the name value?

Incidentally, if you’re wondering why Card doesn’t get the same kind of counter-support that, say, the Duck Dynasty guys do, it’s an unmentioned but simple factor – Card’s a Mormon, and not all Christian activist groups are down with that.