Love Story author Erich Segal died of a heart attack at age 72, his health complicated by his long battle with Parkinson’s disease. The portion of his daughter’s eulogy for him that I’ve read is quite moving.
That he fought to breathe, fought to live, every second of the last thirty years of illness with such mind-blowing obduracy, is a testament to the core of who he was – a blind obsessionality that saw him pursue his teaching, his writing, his running and my mother, with just the same tenacity. He was the most dogged man any of us will ever know.
Love Story was one of those novels that went from my mother to my sister to me, all of us weeping over poor, doomed Jenny and her beloved Oliver. The movie gave Ryan O’Neal something to do after he left the TV series Peyton Place and introduced us to the nostril-flaring Ali MacGraw. I’m sure if I saw it now, my eyes would be rolling non-stop, but I loved it as a youngster–and of course, love means never having to say you’re sorry.
I still haven’t seen Love Story if you can believe that. I feel bad for Segal’s family. He had a daughter who obviously loved him very much.
Have you read Peyton Place? Now I want to since Stephen King wrote how he saw his novel Salem’s Lot as sort of cross between Dracula and PP. I don’t know how good PP is, but I thought King was able to successfully take the idea of showing the seamy underside and mundane evil of a small town before Evil with a capital E shows up at its doorstep.
While it seems tame now, Peyton Place holds up really well.
Must be a night for trbutes to literary icons. I just posted something about Robert B parker.
I have never read the book, but rememebr seeing the movie on “The Big Show” as a young teenager.
Yes, it’s one of those love as a teenager / wonder why as an adult sort of films!
But I did fall a little in love with “Preppy” !!
R.I.P.
I think it would still make me bawl