George Will has a really interesting piece, Gone with the Wind Indeed, up on RCP.
WASHINGTON -- Confined to her bed in Atlanta by a broken ankle and arthritis, her husband gave her a stack of blank paper and said, ``Write a book.'' Did she ever.
The novel's first title became its last words, ``Tomorrow Is Another Day,'' and at first she named the protagonist Pansy. But Pansy became Scarlett, and the title of the book published 70 years ago this week became ``Gone With the Wind.''
You might think that John Steinbeck, not Margaret Mitchell, was the emblematic novelist of the 1930s, and that the publishing event in American fiction in that difficult decade was his ``The Grapes of Wrath.'' Published in 1939, it captured the Depression experience that many Americans had, and that many more lived in fear of. Steinbeck's novel became a great movie and by now 14 million copies of the book have been sold.
But although the $3 price of ``Gone With the Wind'' ($43.50 in today's dollars) was steep by Depression standards, it sold 178,000 copies in three weeks and 2 million by April 1938, when it ended a 21-month run on the best-seller list. By now nearly 30 million have been sold. About 250,000 are still purchased in America every year, and 100,000 elsewhere. ... More
Margaret Mitchell's story of the antebellum south and its great heroine, Scarlet, came into my life when I was thirteen and had a huge impact on me. I first became aware of the book because of a scavenger hunt when one of my Mother's friends showed up at our door wanting to know if we had a copy. I was the only one home, so I went and searched the bookshelf and there it was. After loaning it to the family friend for the hunt, I began to wonder about a book that would be so popular, it would make it on to an adult's scavenger list list.
I was always a curious child, I loved to read, and never was I more curious than during that time of awkward puberty. So, when the book was returned, I couldn't wait to get my hands on it. Up to that point my childhood reading had consisted of the Oz books, Nancy Drew mysteries, the Lassie books, National Velvet, and books of that genre. Gone with the Wind was what I thought of as my first grown-up book. It was also the first book I guiltily sneaked from my Mother's bookshelf to read. After that, I made my way through most of the rest and there was probably a good reason why my Mother wouldn't have been too happy to know her barely teenage daughter's mind was being formed by some of the more risque novels. My Mother had adopted Kahil Gabran's "Tomorrow is Today's Dream" as her personal motto, which she was fond of reciting, and after I read GWTW, I would always add under my breath, "yes and tomorrow is another day." A naive Yankee teenaged girl daydreaming of being a southern belle.
I don't like to read novels more than once. The exception is Gone with the Wind. I've read it at least four times at different ages in my life and finally, when I was in my late twenties, I saw the movie for the first time. I know that now you can watch the movie on TV, but it really is a "big screen" movie and should be seen that way.
When Powerline did its twenty best American novels and left Gone with the Wind off the list I was both surprised and disappointed. My list would put it at number one. I think George Will would have it on his list as well.
Comments