The Sheila Variations

Literary Couples

Got this question from Ted:

“Name a favorite literary couple and tell me why they are a favorite. If you cannot choose just one, that is okay too. Name as many as you like–sometimes narrowing down a list can be extremely difficult and painful. Or maybe that’s just me.”

I am not limiting myself to romantic couples. I am thinking in terms of pairs.

John and Alma Summer and Smoke, (excerpt here). The play itself has some problems, and it is certainly not as well-known as Tennessee Williams' more famous plays - but the love story of John and Alma burns right through me. It is his most tragic relationship ... because you know, if the universe were a FAIR one, these two would be together. And nothing at all can be right in the world as long as it didn't work out between the two of them. I can't read this play without weeping. I have lived it.

Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (excerpt here) Cousins. Comic book artists. At first Sam is resentful of this refugee cousin who has to now share his room in Brooklyn. But gradually, the relationship blossoms into friendship - and not only that, but colleagues. The last conversation in the book between the two cousins made me weep when I first read it. I felt such understated yet unbelievable love there ... And the added layer of Sam Clay being gay - and finally coming to know that about himself ... Killer. I invested in those two. I missed them when that book ended. I still do.

Max and Eleanor. Hopeful Monsters (excerpt here) A British boy, a German-Jewish girl, fighting across war-torn Europe to be together ... and they don't even know why ... they just know that the world is somehow balanced between them, they teeter on a tightrope wire over the abyss - and somehow ... whatever else happens, Europe being swallowed up by fascism and dictatorship ... their love must survive. Whatever form it takes. The form is irrelevant. Amazing relationship.

Nelson Denoon and unnamed narrator. Mating (excerpt here). I honestly can't go into it at this time. All I know is - these people live, and if it is life and death to THEM whether or not they get back together, then it is life and death to me too.

Beverly and Derek Life Without Friends (excerpt here) Please do not judge. This romance GETS to me ... and I re-read the book this summer, and although I am not 17 years old or however old I was when I first read it - it STILL gets to me. I love both of those people. And I love both of them together.

Aubrey & Maturin. The Master & Commander series (excerpt here) Their relationship spans so many books and it never gets old, never seems stale - or like it's schtick. These people were obviously very alive to Patrick O'Brian - I never feel him getting into a rote-mode with them, they are difficult complex men - polar opposites in some ways ... and as they get older, their differences just become more entrenched, rather than softening at the edges. Yet there is obviously something in each one that the other relies upon - and gets from him like no other. They are intellectually curious 19th century men, and their relationship is one I treasure. You want them never ever to stop talking to one another.

Jo and Laurie. Little Women (excerpt here). I don't know who Amy and her blond curls and her stolen limes thinks she is - but Laurie is JO'S MAN ... and the second half of the book always (still) throws me off when stupid German professor with his maudlin poetry enters the picture. Regardless - the first half of that book - when Jo and Laurie become friends ... FUGGEDABOUTIT. Doesn't get any better. I love those two people so much.

Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester. Jane Eyre (excerpt here) The weirdest creepiest literary romance I can think of, with a cross-dressing episode and a calling-across-the-space-time-continuum ending ... an unclassifiable book with two unclassifiable leads. I adore them.

Gillian and the djinn. "The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye" (excerpt here). I know it's obscure but the short story had me in its grip and I still dream and fantasize about it, it was that captivating. Gillian is an academic, a celibate middle-aged woman, who somehow lets a genie out of a paperweight that she bought at a bazaar in Turkey. The genie (or "djinn") is an enormous turban-swathed creature - who somehow - over the course of their evening together - reveals himself as someone with tremendous insight into Gillian, the uptight brainiac. I can't describe it without making it sound trite or silly, and maybe it is all that as well, but God, did I love these two characters. I want a whole book about them!

Johnny Wheelright and Owen Meany. A Prayer for Owen Meany (excerpt here). A cosmic relationship, showing the ultimate structure of the universe, basically. But grounded in the reality ... it's a dynamic that killed me when I first read it, and enraged me, and made me laugh out loud ... and those two people, and their frienship and what it led them to - stays with me to this day. I'm almost afraid to re-read this book.

Valancy and Barney. The Blue Castle (excerpt here). I think it is Lucy Maud Montgomery's finest romance - way better than Anne and Gilbert. Valancy is an uptight spinster, overridden by her family - who - after getting the diagnosis that she only has a year to live - goes INSANE. She bobs her hair. She eats hotdogs on the sidewalk. She moves out of her mother's house and goes to live with a local reprobate whose daughter is dying (after giving birth to a baby out of wedlock). Valancy sets herself up as a housekeeper and nursemaid and eventually meets Barney - a man who has a terrible reputation in town, all sorts of horrible rumors fly about him ... but they meet and connect. Because Valancy only has a year to live, she asks him to marry her. She wants to experience marriage and all that entails. Barney is startled and says, "You know I don't love you, right Valancy? But I have always thought you were sort of a dear." So he marries her. WORDS CANNOT EXPRESS HOW MUCH I LOVE THEIR ROMANCE. Valancy is head over heels, and she feels, because she only has a year left to live, that she can fully love and express that love - because why waste any time? It makes her free and abandoned. Barney knows about the diagnosis, and while he is a confirmed bachelor, accepts her as his wife - and ... well. You'll just have to read the book to see how it all ends. LOVE IT.

Romeo and Mercutio Romeo and Juliet. I always found the relationship between Romeo and Mercutio to be far more interesting than the one Romeo has with Juliet, which is pretty standard (albeit gorgeous) young-love stuff. But the friendship of those two men is one of the reallest in all of Shakespeare's canon, and I never read that play without feeling the loss of it, the sadness of losing such a friend. They're brothers.

ROMEO
I dream'd a dream to-night.

MERCUTIO
And so did I.

ROMEO
Well, what was yours?

MERCUTIO
That dreamers often lie.

ROMEO
In bed asleep, while they do dream things true.

MERCUTIO
O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep;
Her wagon-spokes made of long spiders' legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
The traces of the smallest spider's web,
The collars of the moonshine's watery beams,
Her whip of cricket's bone, the lash of film,
Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat,
Not so big as a round little worm
Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid;
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;
O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight,
O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees,
O'er ladies ' lips, who straight on kisses dream,
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are:
Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;
And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail
Tickling a parson's nose as a' lies asleep,
Then dreams, he of another benefice:
Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon
Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,
And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two
And sleeps again. This is that very Mab
That plats the manes of horses in the night,
And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes:
This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,
That presses them and learns them first to bear,
Making them women of good carriage:
This is she--

ROMEO
Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace!
Thou talk'st of nothing.

MERCUTIO
True, I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
Which is as thin of substance as the air
And more inconstant than the wind, who wooes
Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence,
Turning his face to the dew-dropping south.

I think Mercutio is the best part in that play.

Charlotte and Wilbur. Charlotte's Web Heartcrack. Charlotte's selfless support of Wilbur, her dedication to his LIFE, and Wilbur's growing love of her. They go through all the stages - dawning realization of kindred spirit, one friend the stronger than the other, Wilbur taking advantage of Charlotte, Charlotte sulking, but still doing what she needs to do - because she has this gift. This gift of language. And the last two lines of that book rival any in all of literature. I can barely type it out without tearing up:

It is not often someone comes along that's a true friend and good writer. Charlotte was both.

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