Novels That Resemble Films By Hitchcock, Lynch & Burton – Thoughts on Papyrus

Have you ever wished they were some great novels in existence so that you can again experience the atmosphere or tropes of your favourite films in a literary form? Below are lists of novels that display Hitchcockian, Lynchian and Burtonian trademarks, conveying these directors’ spirit and unique vision. To make these lists more interesting, I have decided not to include novels that became these directors’ films, but highlight others with a similar ambiance or elements.

Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) 🔪

• A great British film director and a true “master of suspense” who built tension in his films through numerous innovative cinematic techniques; notable films include: The Birds, Psycho, Vertigo, Rear Window, Dial M for Murder, Rope, Spellbound, & Rebecca; some of his cinematic “trademarks” include:

Hitchcock’s film Psycho comes from Robert Bloch’s novel, and his masterpiece Vertigo originates in Boileau-Narcejac’s thriller From Among the Dead. Moreover, the British director had close affinity with the work of Daphne du Maurier (making The Birds and Rebecca into films), John Buchan (The 39 Steps) and Ethel Lina White (The Lady Vanishes). Hitchcock was also just dying to convert Boileau-Narcejac’s other thriller She Who Was No More into his own film. He missed that chance to the delight of French cinema when Henri-Georges Clouzot shot it. Novel She Who Was No More has all the usual Hitchcockian elements, down to that thrilling, unbelievable twist.

Hitchcock’s elements also resemble those found in Ira Levin’s books, and Levin was a great admirer of the director. A Kiss Before Dying and Sliver are very Hitchcockian, with the former unveiling its psychopath hidden in plain sight, while the latter is all about surveillance gone haywire. In fact, Hitchcock had previously shown some interest in directing A Kiss Before Dying, but dropped out because he could not “sustain that [delicious] third act”. Clearly, because of the way the novel is written, it is best enjoyed as a book. Hitchcock did present Levin’s short story Sylvia as part of his anthology series in 1958.

Hitchcock is also on the same wavelength as Patricia Highsmith’s creations. He made Highsmith’s novel Strangers on a Train into a film, but her thriller The Talented Mr. Ripley, re-made at least twice by other directors, is also a quintessential Hitchcock, especially regarding such elements as “ordinary people finding themselves in dangerous situations” and “mistaken identity”. Moreover, Preminger’s films bear a strong resemblance. His Bunny Lake Is Missing seems to be a direct response to Hitchcock’s Psycho. But, Preminger also made Laura, and it is based on Vera Caspary’s novel of the same name, that could have been a dream for Hitchcock as well. Laura as a novel has that astonishing twist in the middle, as well as the themes of “an innocent man being accused” and the search for truth that proceeds with a fair amount of suspense.

Similar to Highsmith and Chandler, French author Frédéric Dard is also at home in this category. His existential thriller Bird in a Cage would delight any Hitchcock fan, as it has one curious mystery surrounding a seemingly impossible crime, plus erotic longing and the claustrophobia of one single location. The works of Cornell Woolrich are also undoubtedly Hitchcockian, and the director himself presented some of them, while also taking inspiration from short story Rear Window. Woolrich’s novels Waltz into Darkness and The Bride Wore Black are especially on point since both are dark, suspenseful, atmospheric stories that remind of such 1940s Hitchcock films as Shadow of a Doubt and Suspicion. Waltz into Darkness and The Bride Wore Black were later filmed by Francois Truffaut. Finally, Gone Girl is an obvious modern comparison, but Rinehart’s thriller The Man From Lower Tens is even more fitting, because some of it takes place on a train (another Hitchcockian element), and there is a twisty “mistaken identity” trope. 🩸

David Lynch (1946-) 🔑

• An American director known for films Mulholland Drive, Blue Velvet, Lost Highway, Twin Peaks, and The Elephant Man. “Lynchian” is hard to define precisely. It is a surreal mixture of weirdness and eeriness, and the idea here is that terror resides in its incomprehensibility. Since Kafka is such big part and parcel of Lynch’s vision, I intentionally excluded his works from the list below because of this obvious connection. Other points of reference are Beckett, Jackson, Le Guin, DeLillo and Murakami, and so, some of Lynch’s cinematic “trademarks” are:

In Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf, Harry finds himself in the midst of one otherworldly experience, and the book’s vision of a magic theatre is David Lynch through and through. The same vibe of weirdness emanates from Bioy Casares’s novella The Invention of Morel, where our protagonist tries to make sense of a strange environment around him. Its people behave oddly, and there are mysteries to uncover.

Equally, thrillers Vertigo (From Among the Dead) and The Scapegoat are right at home in the Lynchian universe. There, our main characters find themselves in an increasingly incomprehensible situation with many secrets, a pair of doubles, and an aura of unreality. That inexplicability mixed with dread is also part of Roland Topor’s existential novel The Tenant, where our character rents an apartment in Paris and soon discovers that its previous occupant may have some odd connection to him. The book also contains high doses of Lynchian absurdity.

Considering some elements of Lynch’s series Twin Peaks, the initially unseen horror beneath one comfortable suburban life in Levin’s satirical novel The Stepford Wives is also lynchian. Robbe-Grillet’s The Erasers and Bioy Casares’s Asleep in the Sun also have this quality, minus the satire, where people find themselves in a dream-like ambiance full of conundrums and doors leading to even more puzzling places. That’s also Alice in Wonderland. Everything is familiar, and yet, turned on its head. These two plots’ nightmarish search for sense or identity would just delight Lynch’s admirers. So, would The Box Man by Kōbō Abe, an author whose affinity to Kafka now makes all his stories have some David Lynch element. This time the focus is on alienation and isolation, similar in spirit to Lynch’s cinematic debut Eraserhead.  

Finally, The Affirmation by Christopher Priest presents one uncanny world where our unreliable narrator shifts from reality to fantasy and back again, getting lost in the world of his character who is being granted immorality through lottery. Incidentally, Priest’s other books feature many Lynchian elements, including doppelgängers (The Separation) and dream-worlds (A Dream of Wessex). 🎭

Tim Burton (1958-) 🎪

• An American director who is championing the weird in cinema, with such varied films under his belt as Beetlejuice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow, Sweeney Todd, and Ed Wood; Burtonian “trademarks” include:

First of all, there are books that Burton wanted to adapt in the past, but did not: Geek Love, and The Hawkline Monster. These stories are Burtonian because they display unabashed randomness coupled with horror. In The Hawkline Monster, cowboys are hired by twin sisters to kill a monster in a basement. It is one “funny-spooky” premise that also reconstructs the genre (a western), just like that bonkers ride which was the first Beetlejuice film (that reconstructed the horror genre). Geek Love is also the “Mad Hatter” affair, where a travelling circus resorts to using toxins to create its freak show, as is Partridge’s Dark Harvest, where villagers hunt a giant pumpkin-headed creature every year.

Burton cited Edgar Allan Poe as his inspiration (as also Roald Dahl), so Poe’s short story The Masque of the Red Death is on this list, and since Burton’s imagination is akin to some fairy-tale production machine, the whimsiness of Hoffmann’s Fairy Tales fits right in. Moreover, Italo Calvino’s stories also have fairy-tale-like quality to them, and can complement the director’s magical set-up. Thus, Calvino’s The Baron in the Trees is a perfect Burtonian book, made even more so by the fact that it features an eccentric outsider who decides to live a different-from-everyone-else life – on a tree. This is close to a satire, and I think satirical novella Kappa by Akutagawa would also be right up Burton’s alley because it portrays human-like, green creatures, and the story’s exaggeration and absurdities are just delightful.

Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle has this gothic, creepy, macabre ambiance which any fan of Burton would love, and Morgenstern’s The Night Circus is also said to be Burtonian because of its magic atmosphere that features one, yes, black-and-white-striped circus. Speaking of circuses (also the setting of Burton’s misfire – Dumbo), Finney’s The Circus of Dr. Lao is the perfect Burtonian fare as well, since it has some fantastical beasts in it, and its cheekiness is very much in the spirit of Burton. 🎩