Love Story by Erich Segal 6 out of 10 now, though this reader gave it 10 out of 10 as an adolescent

 Love Story by Erich Segal

6 out of 10 now, though this reader gave it 10 out of 10 as an adolescent

Love Story has enjoyed an immense success decades ago, though the credit goes  mostly to the film, which counterintuitively seems to have been first in concept and then the idea of a book inspired the novel listed among The Guardian’s 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jan/23/bestbooks-fiction - in the Love section (where else)

Even in our parts people were enthralled by it – I remember reading it and being so affected that it is perhaps hard to understand why going through it now it appears almost worthless, prompting indeed the question ‘what is wrong with me?’ for this reader has actually been rather annoyed instead of being shaken, mortified by what is announced from the opening lines – ‘what can you say about a twenty five year old who died…that she was beautiful and brilliant…she loved Mozart and The Beatles…’

From that angle, this seemingly flimsy yarn could function better than the clearly deeper, more sophisticated, demanding, depressing Face of Another by Kobo Abe ( I am guessing he is not related to their Prime Minister and we are to understand that we need to change the way we say the names, for the PM is now Abe Shinzo, so maybe we must say Abe Kobo) in that it offers, like all works of art, a glimpse in the mirror, where the intense feelings experienced as a teenager reading what was then a fantastic story, have been transformed now into a rejection, a cold look, a lack of empathy – well, perhaps when there is finally some rapprochement with the ‘Sonovabitch aka Stony Face’ with what looks now like the Ultimate Artificial Narrative

Love Story appears such a manufactured product – it helps to learn that they thought of the script for the film and then prompted the book, for it thus explains the fact that they  would make a product around something, so it is somehow a double fake, if I can push this nonsenses so far – that for me it has no place on the 1,000 or 10,000 books one must read…with the caveat that for the sixteen year old me, it may have been among the top twenty…I cannot recall more than the fascination with which I have read it

‘Love means not ever having to say you are sorry’

This is one of the quotes from the book and it was so popular and savored that it was on…shirts, that people were wearing even in my remote land, which was then a communist dictatorship by the way, although it was the period before the Ceausescu regime would decide to be more Catholic than the pope, which in tyrannical terms meant that here they were more vicious, brutal, excessive, oppressive than the big boys of Moscow or other countries and then such a message would not be allowed….plus, the version printed here went like this ‘In the love never say sorry’ or near it, since I remember it was wrong and bizarre in the form that had landed on our shores…

On another level, this quote is not the epitome with what I think is wrong with this speculative, weak tale, but it is one example of the nonsense we find inside…how can one say something like that…yes, there is a ’deep meaning’ if you will, I get it…we must assume that these young things are really in love with each other – something this apparently, no clearly aging man does not get anymore – and then when we have such Celestial Emotions, the Nectar of the gods in use, the Ambrosia of the Other World, they do not need to say sorry, they are excused beforehand, and that is another world…yet, it reads as such a phony thing…

The dialogue between the protagonists, Oliver Barrett IV and Jennifer Cavilleri, is another reason to despair – luckily, this is only 139 pages long, as available for borrowing for a period of 14 days, only for this you need less than a day at https://archive.org/ - given that the exchanges are littered with ‘what the hell, you bitch, goddamn preppie’ and more like this…language that has been appreciated, lauded by critics…an insert is presented on the covers of the book, where they quote such ‘dazzling’ modern and authentic talk

Yes, I dig that when he calls her ‘bitch’ it is love, probably modern lingo of the period and it is not to have a fight, but on the contrary, the suggestion must have been that they are again such God-like creatures, Demonic, Superior, Other worldly and Angelis that these seraphic personages can do whatever they goddamn please and their talk is fresh, ‘for real’ and you can think of many other positive traits that this simpleton does not see anymore, as he did when he was closer to their age…only I do not buy that

Another infuriating aspect is another over the top element, the lack of communication between Oliver Barrett IV and Oliver Barrett III, the latter being the father of the former and an accomplished athlete in his time, participant at the Olympics of 28 – was it and I forget where it took place but it is of such huge importance that we can completely forget about it as well as the whole bad Love Story – but unable to get across to his sibling, who calls him Stony Face or Sonovabitch, though it is hard to see what the progenitor has done to merit such treatment, as Jenny would try to explain at one point when she pleads for the father in law…

Again, there is an explanation for a definitive break, when the old snob is pushing for a delay of the planned marriage, but parents could suggest something like that in a modern age where half of matrimonial bonds or thereabouts end in divorce and if they are really serious about their feelings, they could have lived together before legalizing their partnership…it is also clear that the poverty and the origins of the would be daughter in law, who is of Italian descent, have been objectionable to Stony Face and in that, the son who adores his lover could only be aghast at the attitude of Oliver Barrett !!!...

To quote one of the lovers, Jenny I think, this book seemed to the undersigned as ‘full of shit’, perhaps especially so given that the ‘strong emotional side’ , the death announced right there, at the start, appears to be speculated and ads in the manner in which it is treated to the impression that this is an artificial narrative – which is stupid of me to say, for they are manufactured, if we are talking fiction and not biographies or docudramas and such genres – and it reads more like the telenovelas we see on television, meant to cause housewives to cry and watch all the silly thousands of episodes…