“What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died?
That she was beautiful. And brilliant.
That she loved Mozart and Bach. And the Beatles. And me.”
These first lines led to the book that has shaped the idea of romance for generations of people who read Erich Legal’s Love Story in their formative years. Protagonists Oliver Barrett and Jennifer Cavilleri raised the bar for casual flirtatious banter with an indomitable wit that was the signature of Segal. However, this was perhaps his only book that stirred readers into a frenzy around the world. Initially written as a screenplay, it was later turned into a novella at the behest of literary agency William Morris. The New York Times best-selling list aside, the book was also translated into over 33 languages and later made into an eponymous film that left not a single dry eye in the theatre. On Segal’s birth anniversary on June 16, we delve into the popularity of this book and the key memories that one ends up leaving with upon closing the last page.
A simple tale of life, love and death, Segal managed to get everything right when it came to the nuances of two young lovers from vastly different economic background waltzing on the pages of the book that looked beyond the ‘rich-boy-rescues-poor-girl-and-live-happily-ever-after’ trope. The professor of classical literature at various colleges including Yale, Segal was denied tenure at the university where his lectures could over-fill large auditoriums, solely for the sake of this critically judged but wildly popular novel Love Story. His obsession with popular culture was predominant from his Harvard days where he received degrees in comparative literature and harboured a love for writing. He was thrust into the arms of fame but it clashed with his academic pursuits –– a venn diagram of two subsets that rarely, if ever, meet.
“Oliver Barrett IV. Ipswich, Mass. Age 20. Major: Social Studies. Dean’s List: ’60 ’62 ’63. All-ivy First Team: ’62, ’63. Career Aim: Law”
Barrett was the quintessential good-looking, charming, flamboyant Harvard jock who surprised the campus if he was seen with a single woman for more than two days. The Barrett name commanded respect on campus with towers and libraries named after his various family members. He read copiously in the safe silence of the library and he loved Jennifer Cavilleri like a woman deserves to be loved –– with wit, care, charm, dedication and a wide-open heart. We find Segal questioning various socially acceptable masculine tropes through his character as he creates a man who wears his emotions on his sleeves and cries when the love of his life leaves him. Barrett and Jennifer’s conversations have us chuckling. His forgoing of his father’s name and wealth to start from scratch to support his wife melts us into a puddle. In this book, there are two people who constantly save each other, a far cry from the desolate heroines in need of tremendous help.
Ali Macgraw and Ryan O’Neil starred in the film Love Story
“...If you were to tell any of a dozen girls at Tower Court, Wellesley, that Oliver Barrett IV had been dating a young lady daily for three weeks and had not slept with her, they would surely have laughed and severely questioned the femininity of the girl involved. But of course the actual facts were quite different”
The appeal of ‘different’ or of a change in behaviour had never been looked at so positively before. Accommodation became the key as Jennifer and Oliver found themselves amidst acts they would otherwise never be caught seen at –– like attending his football matches for her and hanging by the payphone waiting for her to pick up, for him. They met each other in a field far away from judgments and prejudice on land they called theirs. It didn’t have condescending and overbearing father figures and expectations that pushed you too much too often. While Oliver and his father soured their relationship over his want to marry Jennifer, the latter’s world was made up of love and openness that she shared with her father senior Cavilleri. A lesson in the art of being truly yourself, this book was the monologue of the man of all our collective dreams –– especially when Oliver says, “I was afraid of being rejected, yes. I was also afraid of being accepted for the wrong reasons”.
“I began to think about God. I mean, the notion of a Supreme Being existing somewhere began to creep into my private thoughts. Not because I wanted to strike Him on the face, to punch Him out for what He was about to do to me — to Jenny, that is. No, the kind of religious thoughts I had were just the opposite.”
Love Story is healing in ways that many may not discover on their first read. The anxiety of a man in hopeless love, preparing for the death of his loved one, finds himself in gratitude to an unknown being for every day he gets to spend with his Jenny. This simple act of hope for a miracle offset with a strange sense of spirituality is captured so beautifully in a few simple words. Segal’s book and subsequent movie starring Ali McGraw and Ryan O’Neal had everyone crying buckets at the end, irrespective of gender and age. The movie won multiple awards and hearts, normalising topics that were straight out of a lovesick dreamer’s utopia –– spirituality in difficult times happens to be one such.
“...From somewhere inside me came this devastating assault to make me cry. But I withstood. I would not cry. I would merely indicate to Jennifer — by the affirmative nodding of my head that I would be happy to do her any favor whatsoever”
Jennifer’s choice to respect her father’s wish of a Catholic funeral for her further accentuates this sense of spirituality that Segal wanted to drive home in mere 131 pages. It is a book that made and broke his career in both positive and negative ways. His later novels Class and Doctors held on to the author’s ability to express poignancy with simplicity but lacked the wildly frenzied mass appeal that Love Story commands. It is a book that has acquired cult status and continues to be that one book that every non-reader has also made the effort to read. It is also the book that taught us that ‘love means never having to say you are sorry’. Happy birthday Erich Segal, and thank you for your gift.