Tag: Literature

“Oprah seal on the cover”

HARRIS: It was a pleasure to meet you. I’ll read that book you recommended.

RORY: And don’t be fooled by the Oprah seal on the cover, it’s actually very good.

Rory refers to Oprah’s Book Club, a segment on the Oprah Winfrey Show, which highlighted books selected by the host, Oprah Winfrey. It ran from 1996 until 2011 (with a hiatus in 2002), and in that time it recommended 70 books. Because of the book club’s popularity, previously obscure works could become bestsellers, making an Oprah’s Book Club seal on the cover a highly influential piece of marketing.

Rory does not tell Richard (or the viewer) which book she recommended to the Dean of Admissions. However, due to the aforesaid hiatus, Oprah’s Book Club only recommended two works in 2002. My guess is that Rory recommended Sula, a 1973 novel by Toni Morrison, and her second published work.

The novel is set in the 1920s and ’30s in a fictional small town in Ohio (a favourite setting for Dawn Powell stories, one of Rory’s most admired authors). It is about two black girls named Nel and Sula who are close friends, but who take different paths in life (rather like Rory and Lane). While Nel chooses marriage, motherhood, and the close bonds of the town’s black community, Sula goes to college, lives in the city, and defies conventional sexual morality, bringing down condemnation from the town’s community.

It feels like a book which Rory would be interested in, and would also think suitable to recommend to a Dean, since it is by a Nobel Prize winning author, and the plot involves college and female education.

Dickens

LORELAI: What’s he so excited about?

EMILY: Oh, who knows? Dickens must have dropped a pencil here at some point.

English author Charles Dickens, previously mentioned.

Charles Dickens made his first trip to the US in 1842, and did visit New Haven and Yale University, praising both. In 1868, after another trip, he described Hillhouse Avenue in New Haven as the most beautiful street in America. It’s possible he really did drop a pencil somewhere on campus!

Yale University does have a quill pen once owned by Charles Dickens [pictured], held at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. Richard may have taken Rory to see it, inspiring Emily’s comment.

Nantucket

EMILY: And what do you intend to do with that paper clip?
LORELAI: I intend to carve something really dirty into the bathroom door … What rhymes with Nantucket?

Nantucket, an island about 30 miles from Cape Cod in Massachusetts; the main town on the island is also called Nantucket. European settlement on the island began in the 17th century, and it was a major centre for the whaling industry by the 19th century – it features in Herman Melville’s novel, Moby Dick. Since the 1950s, it has been an upmarket summer colony and popular tourist destination.

The island features in a famous limerick which begins, “There once was a man from Nantucket …”. The original, written in 1902, is:

There once was a man from Nantucket
Who kept all his cash in a bucket.
But his daughter, named Nan,
Ran away with a man
And as for the bucket, Nantucket (“Nan took it”).

It spawned numerous sequels, many of them vulgar in nature, because the island’s name rhymes with “fuck it” and “suck it”. The earliest such example was published in 1927. It is a staple of American humour, with the name itself enough for listeners to understand the allusion, as in this scene.

The Magic Mountain

This is the book Jess reads at the dance marathon while sitting in the bleachers with Shane. (Yes, Jess isn’t a great boyfriend to Shane – forcing her to go to a dance marathon for seventeen hours so he can gaze at his crush and read a book!).

The Magic Mountain is a 1924 novel by German author Thomas Mann. Set in the decade before World War I, it is about a young man who spends seven years in a sanatorium for tuberculosis in the Swiss Alps. Vast, symbolic, and ambiguous, it is widely considered one of the most influential works of 20th century German literature.

Thomas Mann was one Jack Kerouac’s favourite authors, and an influence on Visions of Cody, so it makes sense that Jess would choose to read it.

“Stick four kids in the attic”

LORELAI: Sookie, this is not like the fruit bowl his mother gave you. You can’t stick four kids in the attic and just pull them out at Christmas.

This sounds suspiciously like a reference to the 1979 Gothic novel Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews, the pen name of Cleo Virginia Andrews. The story is about four children, siblings named Chris, Cathy, Carrie, and Cory Dollanger, who are locked in an attic by their grandmother for more than three years, with the consent or encouragement of the children’s widowed mother. The book is the first in a series about the Dollanger siblings.

The book features rape, incest, and murder, and was described as “deranged swill” by one critic, but it was a bestseller. Lorelai has almost certainly read it – she would have been eleven at the time it was published, and it was so popular and shocking at the time that almost every teenage and preteen girl read it as part of a worldwide phenomenon.

“Find a pirate to sit on”

JAMIE: Yes, talking to you would’ve been a distraction.

PARIS: I know. I heard you already. My God, find a pirate to sit on, okay?

Paris refers to the popular stereotype of pirates having a pet parrot sitting on their shoulder (meaning that Jamie is repeating himself, like a parrot). It stems from the character of Long John Silver in Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson [pictured] – for ever after, the idea that pirates and parrots go together has sunk firmly into our collective imagination.

Although there are no accounts of pirates having parrots in real life, exotic birds would have been very valuable at that time, and well worth stealing. It’s more likely that pirates had parrots as profitable cargo, rather than as pets.

Spicoli

MADELINE: But you guys already have some decent stuff planned out, right?

PARIS: Madeline – or may I call you Spicoli?

Paris references the 1982 coming-of-age comedy-drama Fast Times at Ridgemont High, directed by Amy Heckerling (in her directorial debut). The screenplay is by Cameron Crowe, based on his 1981 book Fast Times at Ridgemont High: A True Story – Crowe went undercover at a high school in San Diego and wrote abut his experiences.

The ensemble cast includes Jennifer Jason Leigh, Brian Backer, Robert Romanus, Phoebe Cates, and Sean Penn as Jeff Spicoli [pictured], a permanently stoned surfer – Paris is suggesting Madeline is out of touch with reality as if she is on drugs. The film also marks early appearances by several actors who later became stars, including Nicolas Cage, Eric Stoltz, and Forest Whitaker (the first two in their feature film debuts).

The film initially had modest commercial and critical success, but was a sleeper hit due to word of mouth, and over time became more popular through television broadcasts and home video releases. It is now regarded as a classic and iconic film, and one of the best comedies, as well as one of the greatest high school movies.

The soundtrack to the film peaked at #54 on the album charts and features the work of many quintessential 1980s rock artists, including Jackson Browne, The Go-Go’s, and Jimmy Buffett.