The New York Public Library, publisher of a seriously addictive desk reference has released their list of the Greatest Love Stories of All Time. (Hat tip and curtsey to Hubby for the link).
The article is as shallow and insipid as anything else from the news that attempts to discuss love and romance, including pithy statements that people might turn to reading again with this list, and that the romance novels in the list might help the reader gain wisdom “and have a better date next week or a breakthrough in a relationship that you’re in.”
Wait, maybe your head hasn’t started a slow boil yet. Let me give the next quote from Carrie Sloan, editor of Tango magazine, which published the top ten list with the NYPL:
“Instead of trying to glean wisdom from Britney’s (Spears) latest meltdown, it’s looking back to philosophers and authors who have thought this through, and whose stories have stood the test of time.”
I was supposed to glean wisdom from Britney Spears? And I’m supposed to learn the secrets of romance from romances that detail some substantial dysfunctional relationships?
Get a load of the list and the commentary therein, published in Tango magazine‘s guide to relationships:
4. Casablanca
My conclusions: in this list, romantic is heartwrenching, often whiny, angst, and happy endings are few and far between. I’m not saying that these aren’t good stories – I have a deep love of Sense & Sensibility and Midsummer Night’s Dream, for example – but are these the most romantic stories evah in the histowwy of the woooooold?
Depends on how one defines romance, apparently.
What about the Princess Bride? It says right in the first chapter that it’s the greatest love story of all time.
Insanity, suicide and murder. The vast majority of those books are about those three things, and the romance is secondary.
Yeah, that’s what I think when I think “romance.” *extended eye roll so severe, her eyes pop out of her head and go for a stroll around the block*
What emo idiots wrote this list?
Wow, they really just don’t get it, do they? Sigh.
Maybe the Bitchery should compile our own “official” list of the greatest love stories of all time. I can guarantee my list wouldn’t include as many books with less than happy endings. Sheesh.
Just reading most of the titles on that list depresses me.
Princess Bride for sure!
To be very honest the most romantic love story for me was’nt a book (I don’t think) It was the movie “Creator.”
Yeah, yeah…laugh it up, Miri loves 80’s movies. And yeah, it was a movie I saw the same year I met my husband, so it’s personal.
And as we all know romance like all true art is subjective. That and Peter O’Toole is delicious!
Gah, I love MND, but I’ve NEVER liked Romeo and Juliet nor figured out why some fickle teenagers who fell is lurve overnight and then hatched one of the dumbest schemes of all time is supposed to be romantic.
I remember getting a quarter of the way into Anna Karenina and thinking “Just jump in front of the train already!!”
I’m not sure what I’d posit as greatest of all time, though… does Hannibal count? (ducks) I found it more romantic than R&J at any rate.
Yeah,
nothing like a bunch of dead and miserable people to make for a great love story.
Think I’ll go slit my wrists now 😉
Umm..
How was the Hunchback romantic? I remember it being all sorts of horrible, depressing, and abusive.
“Total Eclipse of the Heart” was inspired by Wuthering Heights? That book is ruined for me forever.
Sense and Sensibility is one of the most romantic stories ever? I want want these list makers were snorting.
Major, major eyeroll.
This is what happens when pretentious English majors* pick the “most romantic” novels. I can see it now—some 20-something was assigned this task, and she didn’t want to come across as all fluffy to her boss, so she went for “classic literature” in order to look brainy.
Except now that I think about it, she probably wasn’t even a pretentious English major. She probably wasn’t an English major of any sort. What wisdom is the reader (or watcher—you know this is based on the movie versions of everything, right? Because the book isn’t called “Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame,” is it? WTF other hunchback would they be talking about?) supposed to get out of these?
There is exactly one piece of romantic wisdom a person can glean from seven of the ten: “Love does NOT conquer all.”
Er, yeah. That’s romantic all right. I think I’ll go listen to J. Giles sing “Love Stinks” a million times, because that’s the same lesson and at least you can sing drunkenly along with it.
*
note the adjective. I am specificially talking about the pretentious sort of English major, not the ordinary sort who is simply a person who loves analyzing literature. All you normal English majors know the sort I mean.
My love for Notre Dame is only slightly less than my love for Les Miserables, but it’s got maybe one paragraph I’d call romantic.
Ishie, I second your opinion of Romeo & Juliet.
Where’s Cyrano de Bergerac? And honestly, I’d pick The Fantasticks as a replacement for Romeo & Juliet: starts with the same story, but addresses the issue of what would have happened if they hadn’t died, and still manages a happy ending out of rather cynical realism. But the plays on the list are works that are read as much as they’re performed these days, so maybe it doesn’t qualify.
Can’t do an eyeroll. I have read (or seen) 7 out of the 10 mulitple times—Didn’t like Dr. Zhivago, Anna Karenina or Hunchback (not the orignal nor Disney’s version.) Maybe it was the years I first encountered these books/movies—formative ones—I have to agree they are works that helped form my idea of what is romantic. Maybe it’s why I’m not wedded to the HEA, and at times find a HEA annoying when it is tacked onto a story where it obbiously doesn’t belong.
I can’t believe they chose a poster of the Disney Hunchback to go with their cutsy little summary about said book. *head desk* And they’ve got the nerve to call it “Literary Loves”!?
I spent Wuthering Heights wanting to throw everyone in the book off of one of the cliffs and into the roiling, turgid sea.
Dangerous Liaisons? Yay for rape!
Given the top three, I would have to say the real goal is trying to get people to actually read the books assigned in HS rather than just picking up a copy of the Cliff Notes.
I didn’t find Romeo & Juliet romantic so much as over the top (There’s a reason that adolescents are sometimes referred to as going through a Romeo & Juliet stage where everything that happens is extremely great or extremely horrible – there was more, but my adolescent psych class was years ago). I will admit that I loved watching Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie version, though.
Anna Karenina, now there was a book I disliked. I distinctly remember throwing it against the wall a couple of times for its tendency to go into extreme detail about minor characters for absurd reasons. I knew I was in trouble when I read in the preface that there were over 100 pages about a peasant for the sole purpose of presenting Tolstoy’s views on Marxism.
My word is lay66. That’s probably closer to romantic stories than half the books on the list.
Wuthering Heights? Cathy making Heathcliff starve himself to death so that her daughter isn’t disinherited is romantic?
Romeo and Juliet? A 16-year-old or 20-year old man seducing a THIRTEEN-year-old barely pubertal girl, arranging an obviously fake marriage (in that everyone in the original audience would have known beyond doubt that it was fake), having sex with her, and driving her to suicide is romantic?
These people have watched too many TV and film adaptations where Romeo and Juliet are the same age or where Cathy ‘kills’ Heathcliff for love.
Argh. Pride and Prejudice I agree with; both the book and the Colin Firth TV adaptation are lovely, lovely, lovely. Anna Karenina, not so much. In the words of PJ O’Rourke, “Leo, why’d she fuck the guy?” Hell, if you’re going to have Anna Karenina on the list, you might as well throw in The Scarlet Letter and have done with it. Not. A. Romance.
The Smart Bitch sounds like a great idea. Just keep P&P, okay?
Romeo & Juliet is sweet, but I refuse to believe that’s real love. And Midsummer Night’s Dream is BRILLIANT BRILLIANT BRILLIANT! [/yzma], but it’s got a lot more to do with lust and sex than love (not that the two are incompatible, etc.).
But my real surprise was one that no one’s mentioned yet: Sense & Sensibility better than Pride & Prejudice? God knows I love ‘em both, and Col. Brandon gives me funny tinglings in my belly, but no WAY is S&S better than P&P.
Ishie, I had the same reaction to Anna Karenina, and by the third quarter of the book I wanted to throw all other characters under the train, too. And I probably had an easier time with it, since I read it in original.
I have a suspicion that this list means movie version of the stories, not the books themselves. I mean, who actually thinks about Dr. Zhivago the book (good book with great poems, but not that romantic, really) and not about Omar Sharif and Julie Christie?
I thought it was a pretty good list actually – but it is a list of best romanTIC rather than Romance novels, isn’t it?
If I were to choose the most romantic novel I had ever read it would be Charlotte Bronte’s Villette. Another classic full of pain and unhappiness –
quite a devastating book, really. But it is undeniably romantic, with a really amazing love story between two people….
If I were to choose the best Romance novel I would probably make a different choice, and I would then have to qualify what I defined as a Romance.
Oy. What wisdom are we supposed to be gleaning from these stories, exactly? Great love = misery, suicide, and banging your head against a tree? I agree that most of the books listed here are worth reading, but about half of them are like the classic examples of what *not* to do when you’re in love.
And I’m not so sure that the (hopefully) few people who “glean wisdom” from Britney Spears (I just threw up in my mouth a little typing that) aren’t better off with her. Britney Spears may be a train wreck, but at least she never threw herself in front of one for K-Fed.
What a list! You might as well have thrown Lolita on that list…hell, even thats happier than some of the other books up there!
But I’m okay with Pride and Prejudice…that one can stay.
ROFL, Lolita… the greatest love story of all time, and yet another where all the characters die.
Great love story = character torture + high body count?
Ishie’s greatest love story: adult characters that have a genuine, adult affection for each other. And fight monsters.
When Anna Karenina focused 6 pages on ordering oysters, it hit the wall. If you’re going to suffer Stephen King syndrome (no editor) at least have a story behind it that isn’t awful.
Not to mention I was forced to read it in high school along with R&J (Hey 14 year olds! When love doesn’t work out, kill yourself!)
I’ll also go with Princess Bride as great love story.
The thing is, I love most of those books. And they are still NOT ALL THAT ROMANTIC. And they CERTAINLY won’t teach me jack about relationships.
I mean come on, I’m supposed to learn about how to deal with my relationship by reading WUTHERING HEIGHTS? “Maybe if I hanged a puppy, my boyfriend would stop banging that other chick…”
And Hunchback? I can’t even express how misrepresentative their description of the book is: “On her sentencing day, Esmeralda is saved from death by her dear Quasimodo. But can true love overcome her distaste for his looks?” Um, there was never any question that Esmeralda was going to fall for Quasimodo. And again, what romance tips am I supposed to get from that book? “Maybe if I save him from death row, take him to my home and don’t let him leave on pain of death, but still can’t communicate with him because I’m deaf and he doesn’t know sign language, that special someone will fall for me!”
My English prof used to swear up and down that Romeo and Juliet was not a romance was never meant to be interpreted as such. Instead, it was intended to be a cautionary, moralistic tale of what happens when two children disobey their parents. Apparently, Shakespeare was trying to stop all the teenagers rebelling against their arranged marriages. It’s only been relatively recently that it has been interpreted as a doomed, tragic romance. Even if that’s not true, I have never been able to get past this comment to see Romeo and Juliet as romantic.
And I second sarahbot’s comment. S&S rated higher than P&P? I love them both, but P&P would rank higher for most people, surely? I know it does for me.
After reading the original article I think the key phrase isn’t romance or romantic, it is love story. This is a list of the “Greatest Love Stories of All Timeâ€. But at this point, I think we are splitting hairs. Most are love stories of a fashion, they just aren’t successful love stories. Not to many HEA’s in this list. I personally am having a tough time getting past Wuthering Heights. Ugh! No, no, no!
As for me I prefer S&S over P&P, although I love them both. Those can stay.
Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame
My question: did they read Notre-Dame de Paris at all? It has a marriage of convenience between a completely airheaded girl and an even more airheaded poet; it has a creepy stalker priest obsessing over (and ultimately executing) said airheaded girl; it has a sleazy soldier who wants in said girl’s nonexistent panties despite his engagement to a bland yet petty woman of his class; airheaded girl is smitten with Mr. Sleaze; and of course poor Quasimodo has a weird, socially inept crush on Airhead, who pretty much views him as handy for rescuing and that’s about it.
And then almost everyone dies.
Love? Sure, Victor Hugo’s love for the architectural majesty of Notre-Dame, which is why he wrote the book in the first place!
(And I love the book madly, but Epic Love Story it is not. Romantic, even less so.)
“Love? Sure, Victor Hugo’s love for the architectural majesty of Notre-Dame, which is why he wrote the book in the first place!”
I didn’t realize Victor Hugo had an Edifice Complex.
I don’t think whoever compiled this list ever read any of the books. And she probably only ever *saw* the Disney version of Hunchback. But damn, doesn’t it sound literary and high-class? Isn’t it a great put-down for anybody who wants a love story that ends with the protagonists actually finding—gasp!—a lasting love?
It’s interesting that apart from the two negative comments on W.Heights, (Throw Cathy Off the Cliff would by my suggestion for a title) there were no comments at all on these great… Love Stories. The Austens certainly belong, though they’re so well-mannered they almost don’t fit with the other angsty epics. And they’re written in a style that most modern book-buyers would find challenging, at best. Still, at least the protagonists are together and breathing at the end.
Love stories = love is brief, intense, and ends miserably. As the Brits say, bugger that for a game of soldiers.
Princess Bride gets my vote, too. I’d rather have Rodents of Unusual Size than the NYC Library’s collection.