Valentine’s Day has rolled around again. It falls on a Wednesday, too, some mid-week good news for hoteliers, restaurateurs, and operators of romantic getaways right here and right now in the beautiful Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. And if you’re alone, or deeply in love with yourself, you can always find romance at the public library.
My candidate for the saddest love story is Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame. It’s about the unreasonable love of the hunchback Quasimodo for a hot Gypsy dancer named Esmeralda. Hugo wrote that Quasimodo’s “…love is like a tree: it grows by itself, roots itself deeply in his being and flourishes in a ruined heart. The fact is the blinder he is, the more tenacious his love is. It is never stronger than when it is completely unreasonable.”
I never enjoyed the play Romeo and Juliette because of its frustrating ending. But I like knowing that the Italian city of Verona, where Shakespeare’s lovers Romeo and Juliet lived, receives about 1,000 letters addressed to Juliet every Valentine’s Day. Can we call that bittersweet? Think about someone, oh, say, up on Mountain Street –some depressive old bachelor – sitting down at a lonely kitchen table and writing a love letter to a long departed –and make believe – girl in Italy. Doesn’t that pull at your heartstrings?
A favorite love story, especially for women, is Pride and Prejudice, written by Jane Austen or, According to the Gospel of Mark Twain, “that gold digger, Jane Austen.” As I vaguely recall, the plot is based on a mother’s advice that “it’s as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor man.” In P&P, Mr. Darcy is that rich man, and Elizabeth Bennet convinces him that she is a worthy, albeit independent and forthright, object of affection.
Among these love stories is the undiscovered masterpiece, Coffee with John Heartbreak: A Mostly True Story of Berryville, Arkansas. It is about a retiring bookseller who is hopelessly and endlessly in love with a woman who “…is hell on wheels, and who makes him happy every time he sees her.”
Happy Valentine’s Day, and happy reading.
“… and I, always from a distance, when I see Mr. Heartbreak with his beloved, my heart breaks a little bit more, like a crumbly cookie.” – from the mind and fingers of a forlorn spinster who . . . ” Perhaps this is my next novel, reckon? Good column, as always. HVD today, Wednesday.