What Is Love?
This, according to a recent edition of Imagine? is the most asked question on Google. 'What is love?' Warms your heart doesn't it? You would think from all the gloomy statistics about divorce, the acres of press given over to celebrity break ups that love has had its day. However, romance is thriving, which is great news for writers - Mills & Boon apparently sell a book every five seconds in the UK. How incredible is that - either we are all hopeless optimists or the quest for true love is alive and well. I've mentioned before one of my much loved and completely terrifying English teachers was rumoured to write steamy M&Bs on the side. While not in the category of 'Lace', 'Fear of Flying' and all the other eighties bonkbusters, these slim volumes single handedly perpetuate a certain kind of mass market romance. I was staying on a friend's boat years ago - I wasn't much older than my daughter - and idly picked up the M&B the mother had left on deck. I glimpsed the immortal words 'his strong, masculine thighs clasped her ...' just as the mother reappeared, ice chinking in her glass. I never looked at her, or M&B the same way again. Have you ever read one? I have to be honest and say I haven't. I may be missing something but say Mills & Boon and I think single red roses, doctors and nurses, haughty landowners and feisty governesses. I think Fabio. Is this romance to you?:
Maybe I'm missing the obvious, but perhaps you also go for something different with your romantic hero/ines (what would the highly successful female actress/pin up version of Fabio be for the chaps - or girls for that matter? (Love is where it falls, as they say). Pamela Anderson in the US perhaps? Jordan in the UK?). I like imperfection - sexy is Javier Bardem's broken nose, or the gap in Vanessa Paradis' teeth. Look at the latest Bond - Daniel Craig is not in the mould of Pierce Brosnan but for the first time since Connery there's a genuine, dangerous, sexy edge to him and it has as much to do with his imperfections as how good he looks in tiny trunks. A gay friend gleefully informed me my type is 'ugly good-looking'. Not sure what the pilot would make of this, but I do prefer intelligent actors like Willem Dafoe or John Malkovich .... The great beauty of writing fiction is that you can say of your hero: 'his blonde hair lifted in the breeze,' and some readers will see Fabio in their mind, some will see a young Robert Redford while others will hopefully picture something more characterful:
Through fiction, readers get to act out the desires and disappointments of their own lives - books are cathartic, inspiring - it's the greatest disjuncture when best loved books are made into films and the characters are not as you saw them. I've just chosen 'The Lives of Pippa Lee' by Rebecca Miller for our book club - mainly because it's a first novel by an interesting writer/director, and I thought from the reviews the main character sounded challenging. From browsing the new, dedicated website, the film is already in production and they have cast the very beautiful Monica Belluci as the first wife. She's gorgeous - but not at all what I had in my mind, and Gigi was one of the most interesting characters (intelligent, beautiful, edgy - I saw someone much older, angular, whose beauty had been tested by experience. I can't imagine Ms Belluci shooting herself at the dinner table). Maybe you've experienced this - what are the book adaptations you've loved and hated? It does work the other way of course - Mr Darcy will forever be dear Colin Firth.
What are the great love stories that have really touched you? One recent film that approached the subject in a fresh way was 'Paris je t'aime' - multiple love stories to the city by different directors played out by a dream cast. The segments were hit and miss, but they covered the gamut of love - straight, gay, love of family and friends. Juliette Binoche's segment as a grieveing mother reunited for a moment with her dead son by Willem Dafoe's ghostly cowboy broke me. It's the old raw nerve left exposed by parenthood - the love you feel for your children is unquestioning, fierce - the thought of losing them unbearable. Loss is woven deeply into all the great stories - Pride & Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, Brief Encounter, Casablanca. Even recent romantic hits like 'The Notebook' have a great sadness to them. 'Your mother is my home,' the old man tells his kids when they are beseeching him to leave his true love at the hospital and come home. It reminded me of one of the simplest and truest lines I've ever read: 'the best a man can do for his children is to love their mother.' Home is where we learn everything we do and do not want from love - what lessons did you learn, and what do you want to pass on to your children?
An interesting point the documentary made was how frequently the best loved love stories end badly. I had to laugh - while The Book is not 'romantic' in terms of genre/category fiction - (it's darker, more about families and relationships than simply a love story), for years it was called 'Love & Loss'. Only this summer did agent number one say 'Naaah - I never liked that title. Too depressing.' Which is ironic - I fought hard for a happy ending (yes, I know suffering = serious = literature, but there's enough of that in real life). She could have told me years ago (shrugs). It has a new title now but love and loss is what it's about. Love and loss is what life is about. At least in fiction, love can conquer all - or give you the impression it can if you cut the story at the point where everything is finally going well. I'd always attributed the wonderful line 'happiness writes white' to Philip Larkin after seeing an excellent BBC film. Turns out he didn't write this, though Clive James has a fascinating article on his site about this very topic. Larkin did say: 'Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth.' In the Larkin biopic, Hugh Bonneville captures the poet's delivery perfectly. It's an affecting performance - Larkin says at one point that writing about unhappiness is the source of his popularity - after all most people are unhappy. What do you think?
TODAY'S PROMPT: Have you read about Georges Polti's Dramatic Situations? Based on an earlier work, he argued that there are only 36 situations on which all works of drama and fiction are based. I can't recommend the work highly enough - not just in terms of studying drama, but also as a tool for writers. If you are stuck for a storyline, Mr Polti clearly lays out the thirty six options. Nine of the situations refer directly to love. If you are at a loose end today, why not look the work up online, and pick out a couple of the scenarios that appeal to you - rough out a scene or character, or reflect upon how those situations have played out in your own life.
