A proposal: Read No. 1 bestselling books from the year you were born
Sometimes ideas arrive, unbidden, into my head. Most of them I ignore, because they are bad, but one recently stuck: You should read all of the No. 1 bestselling books in the year youwere born.
That year is 1970, and thanks to the internet, it is easy to find the No. 1 bestselling books in the year youwere born. You should try it yourself; it’s fun.
Turns out, therewere only three No. 1 bestselling books the year Iwas born, and I’ve already read two of them: “The Godfather” by Mario Puzo and “The French Lieutenant’ s Woman” by John Fowles.
I read “The Godfather” in college under my own initiative when Iwas supposed to be reading books like “The French Lieutenant’ s Woman .”“The Godfather” is terrific, pulpy fun, and I recommend it even if you’ve seen the films. I read “The French Lieutenant’ s Woman” post-college when I was trying to become a completist of the work of John Fowles. My memory of it has been subsumed by the film version starring Meryl Streep, which is alsoworth your time.
The third No. 1 bestseller of 1970 is “Love Story” by Erich Segal.
Reader, as a novel, it is not worth your time.
Clearly, the book buyers of 1970 found some virtue in the tale of the doomed lovers, Harvard hockey star/ blue blood Oliver Barrett IV andworking class spitfire Jenny Cavilleri. Itwas the No. 1NewYork Times bestseller from May 10, 1970, to Feb. 14, 1971, a year to the date of its original Valentine’s Day release. Themovie version starring Ryan O’Neal and Ali MacGraw was in theaters just before Christmas 1970, no doubt further fueling the phenomenon.
In a lot ofways, it doesn’t read anything like a novel. Narrated from Oliver’s point of view, the book is almost entirely absent setting, scene and description. Oliver tells us some stuff, some witty banter is exchanged that lets us see the sparks between Oliver and Jenny, and then we move on. Emotions are asserted, rather than dramatized or felt. Even the most wrenching events— Oliver’s break with his overbearing father (who doesn’t seem all that overbearing to anyone but Oliver) and Jenny’s death— are largely inert.
Not tomention, the culture has changed since 1970. The gender politics in the book are retrograde. Oliver is besotted with the spirited and headstrong Jenny, but he’s also more than a bit of a sexist pig. When Jenny is dying, her doctor lies to her about the severity of her condition, while disclosing the full truth to Oliver— who hides it from her, ostensibly to spare her suffering. What the …?
The book’s iconic line, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry,” follows an incident when Oliver rips the phone off thewall in a fury and hurls it across the apartment when Jenny attempts to reconcile Oliver and his father. I’m pretty sure an apology was in order.
The book’s afterward tells me the story started as a screenplay, whichmakes a lot of sense, as it’s more of a crude summary of amovie than a fully realized novel. To enjoy the book, it helps to picture O’Neal and MacGraw saying the lines to each other as their beauty shines through the screen.
The novel is incredibly short, at least. I read it in less than 90 minutes, shorter than the running time of the film.
Some things just seem to take off, independent of their “quality,” I guess.
It makes me wonder if someone will be writing in 2061, wondering what the heck “Fifty Shades of Grey” was all about.
John Warner is the author of “Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.”