Arianna Georgi

I’ve read Little Women pretty much every year since I was ten.  I love that book, and I love almost every version of the movie (the best being the 1949 one and the worst being the one with Katharine Hepburn because she is too old and pretty to be Jo).  I love how disgustingly good the whole March family is, giving their meager Christmas breakfast away after a few seconds of debate (I wouldn’t be so good- real butter?  F-that).  I love how superficial Amy is and the part where Jo cuts her hair.  I’m not so nuts about Beth, but I still cry when she dies (SPOILER ALERT).  The book is comfort food to me and every time I read it I am delighted in spite of knowing every plot turn.

Well, mostly delighted… there is one thing I just have a hard time getting past.  Every single time, I go into Little Women praying the relationship between Jo and Laurie will end up differently and she’ll choose him.  It makes no sense to me that she doesn’t.  He’s handsome, he rich, he thinks her creativity is awesome and he acts in her stupid attic plays.  He loves her for exactly who she is, but doesn’t she return the favor.  For whatever reason, Jo ends up running off to New York and getting married to an old guy with a whole litter of kids who acts all snobby about the fact that she writes ridiculous soap opera short stories.   Bad call.

This is not the only book or movie that irks me in this way.  When I was younger I used to wonder why the clever reporter couldn’t just choose the bad guy in whatever super hero movie I was watching.  Sure, he wants to destroy the earth or blow up the moon, but he also has an awesome evil lair, and he’s totally into you.  Do you really want to date a super hero anyway?  Not only do you have to spend all your time being good, but other women would hit on him constantly.

And consider the case of Reality Bites, one of the defining movies (and soundtracks), of my teenage years.  Why would you turn down handsome, successful Ben Stiller to be with sulky, “deep,” Ethan Hawke?  Ben Stiller wants to buy Laney things, take her to nice dinners, and make her silly documentary into a movie.  Ethan Hawke wants to get high and sings the Violent Femmes.  He makes fun of her dress.  He’s a jerk.

Tucked into all of this is the idea that these guys are better because they see our heroine for who she really is.  Laurie loves Jo, but he doesn’t push her to become the writer should go be.  Ben Stiller loves Laney, but he edits her movies into MTV style visual junk food.  I get it, but I’m not entirely convinced these other guys are so great either.  The Professor has never even met Jo’s family and that’s a pretty crucial part of who she is.  Ethan Hawke has sex with Laney and then freaks out (but later he wears a suit which presumably means he has grown up and won’t do that anymore).  Why can’t they just end up with the guy that loves them without all the work?  Why does Winona Ryder make such terrible choices in movies?

I will never stop rooting for Laurie and I’ll never stop being grossed out when Jo hooks up with the old guy.  As for Ben Stiller, if Laney doesn’t want him I am more than happy to take him for myself.

Tags: Movies, TV

My friend Mr. Kenneth Berger, who once went squid fishing (this is not relevant to this story but it is one of my favorite Kenneth facts), recently tagged me in a Facebook note about books.  I don’t normally get into the Facebook note stuff, but I really liked the premise of this one, which was to name15 books in 15 minutes.  The idea was to name the 15 books that came immediately to your mind when you were asked.

I found that when I listed the books, they weren’t necessarily the ones that I thought were the best books I have ever read, but rather the ones with small moments I think about on a weekly basis.  For instance, almost every time I drink coffee, I think briefly about the scene in a Tree Grows in Brooklyn where Francie says she’ll take her coffee black, like her father.  It’s not really an important moment in the overall plot of the book, but it’s stuck with me for years and years.  Doing the book exercise I found I remembered these moments and books first.  For example:

• Peter Fallow’s Hangover in Bonfire of the Vanities:  “The membranous sac was his head, and the right side of his head was on the pillow, and the yolk was as heavy as mercury, and it rolled like mercury, and it was pressing down on his right temple and his right eye and his right ear. If he tried to get up to answer the telephone, the yolk, the mercury, the poisoned mass, would shift and roll and rupture the sac, and his brains would fall out.”

• Eva, dancing to burning Down the House while pregnant in We Need to Talk about Kevin

• Jennifer Belle’s description of a woman so cool and subtle she could change shirts in the middle of a restaurant with no one noticing in High Maintenance

• The water full of things “living and dead” and the dog sitting on the back of a cow in the hurricane seen of Their Eyes Were Watching God

• The description of IQ in Soon I will be Invincible

In writing, sometimes the quality isn’t about the big stuff, but rather the details and truths the writer gets right in every paragraph.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the big stuff and the drama…  Scarlett declaring she will never go hungry again.  But it is the small details, Mrs.  Tarelton and her horses, that I come back to again and again.  I think I come back to these moments because something in them rings true to me.  Anyone else?