Untold Romance

In Paper Cuts, a blog put together by the NYTBR and admitedly a bit better than mine, last week on Valentine's day someone solicited from it's readership Romance found in books. The readers mention the Fountainhead (!), the Alexandria Quartet, Walden (romance of nature), Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, Lolita and even from Claire Tomalin's bio of Thomas Hardy with Hardy and his wife living completely separate lives until she dies alone in her room and he suddenly realizes he loves her, has her corpse propped up on his bed and writes mournful poetry about her for the rest of his life.

Romantic? Anyway my perverse idea of romance in books is not much better since what came to mind was John Bayley and Iris Murdoch in Elegy for Iris. Of course it is very depressing with John Bayley watching her dwindle away, but their love affair was very passionate in the begining and whatever it was, however unequal it was, it worked. It reminds me of that book by Ann Patchett about her friend Lucy Grealey Truth and Beauty where she has written it to convince you what a great person Lucy was and all you see is what a good friend she actually was to put up with the insufferable Lucy. John Bayley is competely besotted with Iris and wants you to be too, and in the end you are besotted with him, not her.

Hmm what does this say about romance for me? Well now I have another romantic entry, Untold Stories by Alan Bennett. It's a book of memoirs, thoughts, diary entries etc that he put together while going through chemo instead of writing another play. He is a wonderful writer and the first piece is on his parents and their very quiet love affair. The father was a butcher and the mother is the quiet reserved sister of two vivacious and vulgar aunties. There is something so timid and gentle about the parents and the way they cling to each other through everything, somehow they make a perfect pair and there is something very romantic about it.

When the mother suffers from mental illness the father visits her daily without fail, anxiously arriving right at the moment visitor's hours start and sitting holding her limp hand until the last moment again. There is something very beautiful and quiet in the romance of Alan Bennett's parents, much more so than the arrogance of the love affair in the Fountainhead or the dysfunctional Alexandrian Quartet tangles, and no hypocrisy like Thomas Hardy clinging to his ignored dead wife.