Category: S1Ep11: Paris is Burning

“There’s a certain slant of light”

MAX: “There’s a certain slant of light, winter afternoons, that oppresses like the heft of cathedral tunes.” That, my friends is the first verse of a poem by Emily Dickinson. Now read some of those tonight, and as you do, consider the fact that Emily Dickinson writes convincingly about passion and about the world in spite of the fact that she lived as a virtual recluse. It’ll help you appreciate her mind.

Max is reading from the Emily Dickinson poem identified by its first line, There’s a certain slant of light, numbered as 258 in her collected works. It was written around 1861, although not published until after her death.

The poem is about the oppression and even despair brought on by the bleak New England winter. Max and Lorelai began their relationship on the first snowfall of the year – something which for Lorelai is imbued with an almost magical sense of joy and expectation.

As Max reads from this poem which describes the sense of impending doom and death brought on by winter, we can feel that their relationship is about to become much colder. We might also remember that on the day Max first asked Lorelai on a date, he mentioned her icy attitude toward him. Now is the time for that frosty snow queen to reawaken.

Swann’s Way

This is the book that Max loans Lorelai after she said she always wanted to read Proust.

It is the first volume of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, and begins with the narrator’s childhood, centred on his family’s country house in the village of Combray. M. Swann is a neighbour of the family, with one of their favourite country walks being past his house – Swann’s Way. M. Swann will end up being a major character in the novel, and the narrator greatly attracted to his daughter, Gilberte Swann.

We learn later that it took Rory ages to read the book, having to renew it at the library ten times (if she’s not exaggerating, she may have taken 4-5 months to read it, depending on how long the library allows books to be checked out).

Lorelai tells Rory she only read the first sentence of Swann’s Way, which is: “For a long time I used to go to bed early”. That seems rather soon to give up, but later she tells Max she read the first twenty pages, which she exaggerates as all one sentence. The first twenty pages or so are the “Overture”, all of which are involved with that first going to bed.

Lorelai defends herself by saying she is too busy to begin reading the “longest book known to man”. Presumably she means the entire seven volumes, which are over 4000 pages long as a whole. It is indeed the longest novel in the world according to the Guiness World Book of Records.

Lorelai is not alone. Many readers have abandoned their attempt to read Swann’s Way, which has a beautiful style, but very lengthy, dense paragraphs with meticulous observations, and a plot so painfully slow, discursive, and ambiguous that it sometimes seems not to have one at all.

Those who complete it may take years to do so, and just managing to finish the book, let alone enjoy or understand it, is often considered a rare feat in itself.

(I don’t know whether one of the original titles for Gilmore Girls, The Gilmore Way, was an allusion to this book).

Michael Chrichton

LORELAI: Every now and then, I’m seized with an overwhelming urge to say something like, “As Marcel Proust would say …”, but of course I have no idea what Marcel Proust would say so I don’t even go there. I could do, uh, “As Michael Crichton would say ..”, but it’s not exactly the same, you know.

Michael Chrichton (1942-2008) was a best-selling American author, screenwriter, director, and producer. He is best known for his science fiction, thriller, and medical fiction novels. Many of his books have been adapted into action films. Lorelai has apparently read at least one of his books, but it is unclear which one/s, as he was a fairly prolific writer.

In 2001, his most recent novel would have been Timeline (1999), a thriller about time travel to medieval France. This is a rather amusing counterpoint to Proust’s masterwork In Search of Lost Time, which is also set in France and deals with the problem of time in a completely different way.

Proust

LORELAI: (turns around to look at Max’s books) Wow these are beautiful! Hmm, I never read Proust, I always wanted to.

Marcel Proust (1871-1922) was a French author, best known for his monumental seven-volume part-autobiographical novel, À la recherche du temps perdu (“In Search of Lost Time”, earlier translated as “Remembrance of Things Past”), published between 1913 and 1927. He is considered to be one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century.

In a television series where the flow of time is a major theme, it’s not surprising that Proust makes a significant appearance, as his novel is a philosophical meditation on the nature of time, and how “clock” time can be very different to our personal experience of time.

Ossobuco

This is the meal that Max makes for Lorelai when she spends the evening at his apartment. It is a traditional Italian dish, originating from Milan, and consists of veal shanks braised with vegetables, white wine, and broth. Its name translates as “bone with a hole”, referring to the marrow hole in the centre of the shank.

Max learned the recipe from a former girlfriend, possibly one of Italian heritage. For some reason he is shy about telling Lorelai this, even though he already told her about a serious relationship he had two episodes back.

This Old House

MAX: And yet, as soon as that dinner’s over and I start cleaning up, suddenly that’s when you’re starving.
LORELAI: What can I say – watching someone work makes me hungry. If I hadn’t stopped watching This Old House I’d be five hundred pounds right now.

This Old House is a highly popular home improvement television show which has aired since 1979, and is broadcast from Stamford, Connecticut. Presumably Lorelai started watching it after she bought a house of her own in Stars Hollow so she could learn how to do home repairs; she probably stopped watching it once she realised she could get Luke to do everything for her.

We last saw Max having his first date with Lorelai in Love and War and Snow. We only just now discover that they been dating happily ever since and are still together.

Damien

LORELAI: Look, I know it [her treatment of Skippy] was bad, but this was a vicious hamster. This was like a Damien hamster with little beady eyes and a big forked tail and … a cape with a … hood …

Lorelai is referring to the 1976 horror film The Omen, directed by Richard Donner. It is about a little boy named Damien (Harvey Spencer Stephens) who appears to be the Antichrist, and around whom numerous unexplained tragedies take place. The Omen was the #5 movie of 1976 and received excellent reviews; it also gained an Academy Award for its score. Today it is recognised as a horror classic.

Interestingly, Rottweiler dogs feature in the film as a mysteriously evil force. Buttercup is part-Rottweiler, suggesting that, like Skippy, she may have ended up being another “bad pet” that Lorelai would have had to abandon if Lorelai had adopted her.

Skippy the Hamster

Lorelai’s mistreatment of Rory’s childhood pet hamster is Rory’s reason to not allow her to get a dog, a nice reversal of the usual parent-child relationship.

It’s interesting that Rory says that Lorelai doesn’t need a dog as she has her, suggesting that Rory sees herself as more of a pet than a daughter. It is only when Lorelai no longer has Rory that she gets a dog – although she treats it more like her child than her pet.

It is not known when Rory might have had a pet hamster. They didn’t get their own house until Rory was eleven, suggesting it might have been after that. However, by that stage Rory should have been old enough to care for her own hamster, so that Lorelai wouldn’t need to do anything. If Rory had a hamster during the mysterious “lost years” between perhaps four and ten, we don’t know what circumstances Lorelai and Rory lived in, but whatever it was, it apparently allowed pets.

“The doggy version of you”

RORY (reading from card): “Buttercup is a special dog. She’s extremely skittish and tends to react badly towards blonde haired females, brunet males, children of either sex, other animals, red clothing, cabbage, or anyone in a uniform.”
LORELAI: (to Luke) Hey, we just found the doggy version of you.

Naturally Lorelai would be attracted to a dog version of Luke – who is of course doggedly loyal to Lorelai.

The dog Lorelai eventually gets is even more neurotic and weird than Buttercup.