Saturday, May 24, 2003

Our neighborhood bookstore moved into a new building recently, gentle reader, and I thought of you while browsing its shelves today. I want to share this passage from Captain Corelli’s Mandolin with you. If you saw the atrocious movie, don’t let it deter you from reading the book, nor anything by de Bernières for that matter. Brownie points too for locating a copy with its original cover; there’s something about a glossy cover with Penelope Cruz and Nicholas Cage swapping spit that just seems unsettling.

You’ll find this paragraph on page 281–pagination is uniform despite the different covers, I believe–when Dr. Iannis advises Pelagia, his daughter, about love.

“And another thing,” so begins the doctor.

“Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part.

Because that is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don’t blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being “in love,” which any fool can do.

Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and it is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.”

Pretty interesting shiznit, don’t you think, dear reader? I also recommend that you read Senor Vivo and the Coca Lord, another fine yarn spun by the same author.